Kohlberg held that a person reasoning at Stage 3 who moves up will next reason at:

1. Kohlberg's stages form an invariant sequence. 2. Stages cannot be skipped; each adds a perspective needed for the next. 3. A person cannot jump from Stage 3 (peer approval) straight to Stage 5 (social contract). 4. So the next step up from Stage 3 is Stage 4. **Why not the others:** Stage 5 is the trap: Kohlberg used exactly the jump from Stage 3 to Stage 5 as his example of what cannot happen. _Source: Wikipedia, "Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development", section "Theoretical assumptions (philosophy)" (revision 1376737595)_