Erikson, Piaget & Psychology Theories & Concepts Explained

Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory: The Equation Psych Students Get Wrong

You’ve probably seen the equation B = f(P,E) in a psych textbook and moved on without a second thought. But Kurt Lewin’s field theory was actually addressing a question that trait psychologists and behaviorists both got wrong for decades: does personality or the situation drive behavior. Lewin’s answer, developed in the 1930s and 1940s, was that neither one works alone.

More Knowledgeable Other: Why Vygotsky’s MKO Still Matters

A five-year-old cannot tie her shoes alone, then one afternoon her older brother sits beside her, wraps his hands loosely around hers, and talks her through the loop and pull three times. By the fourth try, she does it without him. Nothing about her brain changed in that hour. What changed was who was next to her. Lev Vygotsky built...

Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development: All 6 Stages Explained with Examples

Kohlberg’s stages of moral development offer one of psychology’s most detailed maps of how people reason about right and wrong. Lawrence Kohlberg identified three levels of moral reasoning — each split into two stages, totaling six — and argued that what separates people isn’t what they decide is right, but why they think it’s right. That distinction changed how psychologists,...

Postconventional Morality: Why So Few People Ever Reach It

A government contractor leaks classified documents, fully expecting prison, because he believes citizens have a right to know what their government is doing to them. That kind of reasoning — where conscience outranks the law itself — sits at the far end of Kohlberg’s model. Postconventional morality is what psychologists call this territory: reasoning built on self-chosen ethical principles rather...

Kohlberg’s Conventional Ethics: Why Rules Feel Like Right

A driver stops at a red light at 3am with no one else on the road. Nobody’s watching, there’s no ticket coming, and yet they wait for green. That instinct sits at the center of Kohlberg’s conventional ethics — the mid-level of his moral development model, where right and wrong get defined by social approval and law rather than self-interest...

Kohlberg’s Preconventional Stage: Why Kids Reason This Way

Picture a kid who stops hitting his younger brother not because he understands that it hurts, but because getting caught means no screen time for a week. That is Kohlberg’s preconventional stage in action — moral reasoning built entirely around consequences rather than values. It is the starting point of Lawrence Kohlberg’s three-level framework, typical for children roughly between ages...