During a two-hour January interview with The New York Times, President Donald Trump announced the only limit to his power is "my own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me."
That could be a sign of stunted developmental growth, according to studies by developmental psychologists and MS NOW contributor Kristen Monroe, who wrote that Trump’s level of morality is the one most human beings grow out of soon after they’re potty trained.
“[Development psychologist Lawrence] Kohlberg began studying moral growth in children in 1958 and developed a six-stage theory that describes individual morality as evolving sequentially, with later stages building on earlier reasoning,” said Monroe, a University of California-Irvine Ethics Center Director and author. “Stage 1 involves avoiding trouble and following authority figures. In Stage 2, people ask, ‘What’s in it for me?’ That is, they seek reward and personal gain.”
Monroe said adolescents and most adults eventually move on to “Stage 3,” in which they seek approval and want to be judged “good” by their peers, and then “Stage 4” where they respect authority, and want to maintain social order and obey laws out of a sense of duty. Even later, most humans proceed to the stages where we grasp abstract principles such as “justice.” At Stage 5, for example, we often realize that laws serve a greater good, and we begin to recognize the value of individual rights.
“At Stage 6, universal ethical principles emerge,” said Monroe. “We follow a personal code of ethics and care about concepts like justice and human rights.”
But the man in the White House is still mucking around in Stage 2, still coming to terms with "what’s in it for me," according to Monroe. He’s also allegedly missing “key characteristics that defines us as humans.”
“Trump’s moral development resembles that of a toddler, not of a seasoned statesman or thoughtful head of state,” Monroe argued. “Trapped at one of Kohlberg’s lowest moral levels, Trump behaves like a child who sees the world only through the lens of what is best for him. Trump is encumbered by neither compassion nor a concern for justice or human rights. He appears incapable of understanding, for example, why Americans are sickened over a mother who was killed in Minneapolis last week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.”
Monroe said Trump “shows no sympathy for the families whose health care and food benefits he has taken or threatened to take,” and he shows “no concern” for immigrants separated from their families, or putting their children in cages.
Similarly, Trump has exhibited “no awareness of the disgust” many Americans feel for him when he does things like post AI videos of him wearing a crown and dropping excrement on crowds he was elected to serve.
“He gave no indication that he understood how offensive it was for him to host a ‘Great Gatsby’-style Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago while millions of laid-off government workers worried about where they would get their next meal,” Monroe said.
But Monroe said the American people are not “trapped in Trumpian morality,” and they’re likely going to react badly to his stunted sense of ethics by taking out his allies.
“The irony of his being stuck in the ‘What’s in it for me?’ phase is that such a worldview has the potential to cost him the votes for Republican candidates he wants elected in the 2026 midterms,” said Monroe. “His inability to see and understand what the country considers moral may cause the voters to impose restraints on him that he won’t put on himself.”
Catch Monroe's MS NOW essay at this link.
