Final answer:
Immanent justice is most associated with Piaget's preoperational stage of cognitive development, where children may see unrelated events as punishment for misdeeds. Carol Gilligan critiqued earlier research on moral development for gender bias, identifying that males and females might show different patterns in moral reasoning.
Step-by-step explanation:
Immanent justice, which is the belief that unrelated events serve as automatic punishment for misdeeds, is often seen in the thought processes of children, indicating a form of reasoning associated with Jean Piaget's stages of moral development. Specifically, Piaget associates the belief in immanent justice with the preoperational stage of cognitive development, which typically involves children between the ages of 2 and 7. During this stage, children's thinking patterns display egocentrism, meaning they have difficulty seeing perspectives other than their own, and they may interpret unrelated events as punishments for their actions.
Carol Gilligan, on the other hand, brought a different perspective to the field of moral development by suggesting that earlier researchers like Kohlberg might have overlooked the difference in moral reasoning between the sexes. Gilligan proposed that males tend to adopt a justice perspective, focusing on rules and laws, while females are more inclined towards a care and responsibility perspective, taking into account personal relationships and the nuances of situations. Thus, Gilligan provided an important critique of earlier work, emphasizing the role of gender in moral development.