Stage transitions in moral reasoning: A longitudinal study of developmental processes.

The study examined the internal organizational aspects of disequilibrium that are held to be responsible for moral stage transitions and, in doing so, compared the predictions of the consolidation/transition and gradual-transformation models. A sample of 227 children, adolescents, and adults responded to a moral judgment interview twice over a 2-year interval. The distribution of subjects' reasoning across stages at the initial interview was used to predict subsequent stage transitions.