In Development  a web journal

Just be fair!

We all want fair treatment from the people we deal with. And they want it from us.

So, what is fair?

The late Lawrence Kohlberg spent his entire adult life, beginning with his doctoral dissertation in 1958, thinking about and researching how people develop their sense of justice.

In 1984, Kohlberg concluded (in his book, The Psychology of Moral Development: the Nature and Validity of Moral Stages) that there are five ways of looking at an issue that one can use to answer the question, What is fair:

• Reciprocity — the just delivery of reward or punishment for one’s actions (tit for tat);
• Prescriptive role taking — imagining being in the position of others and balancing other’s perspectives fairly with one’s own perspective while appreciating the consequences of his or her own actions
• Equality — the identical distribution of goods, or the equal consideration of differing claims, or the equal participation of all in the process of considering claims
• Universality — expecting that one’s judgments must be fair to all; and
• Equity — compensating others for injustice they have suffered.

In a broader sense, Kohlberg identified six discrete and sequential stages of moral reasoning that people can  develop over a lifetime. At such different stages of moral development, people use the five means of thinking about fairness in varying degrees.

Someone who employs all of these thoughtful orientations to justice will have developed to the sixth and final stage in Kohlberg’s spectrum of moral development. And that would be pretty special indeed.

According to the decades of research conducted by Dr. Kohlberg at Harvard — and many of his colleagues at institutions around the world — such a morally-conscious individual would be a rare bird indeed. Of the six stages of moral development, only about 15-percent of the adult population ever reaches Stage 5.

What about Stage 6? Too small, too inconsistent a portion of the general population is measured as attaining that level of morality to assign a reliable percentage.

Sigh.

Still, the list of five ways of thinking about fairness gives us a pretty good checklist for working through a pending action and considering the question of “Is this fair?”

1. Is this in honest measure — a clean transaction of this for that?
2. Am I seeing this from the other person’s perspective? Can I appreciate how my actions will be perceived by the other?
3. How would I feel if I were on the receiving end of this — would it seem fair to me? Would an impartial party look at this and say, yes, that seems like it was fair to you both?
4. What if what I’m doing were to set a precedent or became the model for everyone? Is this action I’m taking what I’d like as the universal example of fairness?
5. If what I’m doing causes another to feel harmed in some way, am I willing to make amends, to relieve the discomfort?

A moment of thought on these questions should bring clarity to the issue of whether what you are about to do is fair.