research. Still, it has the merit of focusing on and analysing moral reasoning's behavioural aspects and not just the idea of justice and rightness. Damon's methodology was experimental, using children aged between 3 and 9 who were required to share toys. The study applied the sharing resources technique to operationalise the dependent variable it measured: equity or justice. The results demonstrated an obvious stage presentation of the righteous, just behaviour. According to William Damon's findings, justice, transposed into action, has 6 successive levels: Level 1 – nothing stops the egocentric tendency. The children want all the toys without feeling the need to justify their preference. The justice criterion is the absolute wish of the self; Level 2 – the child wants almost all of the toys and justifies his choice in an arbitrary or egocentric manner (e.g., "I should play with them because I have a red dress", "They are mine because I like them!"); Level 3 – the equality criterion emerges (e.g., "We should all have the same number of toys"); Level 4 – the merit criterion emerges (e.g., "Johnny should take more because he was such a good boy"); Level 5 – necessity is seen as the most important selection criterion (e.g., "She should take the most because she was sick", "Give more to Matt because he is poor"); Level 6 – the dilemmas begin to come up: can justice be achieved, considering only one criterion? The consequence is the combining of criteria: equality + merit, equality + necessity, necessity + merit, equality = necessity + merit. The final level of Damon's mini theory is an interesting display, in the social setting, of the logical cognitive operationalisation. This permits decentration and the combination of many points of view, favouring allocentrism. See also Elliot Turiel James W. Fowler Stages of faith development Jane Loevinger Stages of ego development Michael Commons Model of hierarchical complexity Moral hierarchy Positive disintegration Social cognitive theory of morality Universal value References Further reading External links Moral Development and Moral Education: An Overview Kohlberg's Moral Stages Do the Right Thing: Cognitive science’s search for a common morality (Boston Review) A Summary Of Lawrence Kohlberg's Stages Of Moral Development Lawrence Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development (Envision your Evolution) Kohlberg Kohlberg Kohlberg Meta-ethics 1958 introductions Developmental stage theories