Justice- and care-based reasoning in real-life moral situations
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2005 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Book of Abstracts (CD version): European Conference on Developmental Psychology |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Psychology |
| Keywords | moral situation; reasoning; justice; care |
| Description | Problematic of moral reasoning is often studied from the cognitive-developmental perspective. We suppose that real-life and relevant situation can evoke different moral structures than hypothetical or non relevant situation. Our research is part of current study aimed at moral development. Research sample consisted of 49 female university students aged 18-25 years. We used a questionnaire with 4 real-life moral situations with 9-10 justice- and care-based reasoning. Our results give support for existence of two moral orientations. We found an eliminating of these reasoning. When care-based reasoning was more preffered, justice-based reasoning was less preferred and vice versa. Contrary to Gilligans results we found out that women use both care- and justice-based reasoning. Surprisingly they indicated higher agreement with postconventional justice-based reasoning than postconventional care-based reasoning in general. We found out that personal relevance of moral situation had effect on increase of care-based reasoning. Our research results in conclusion that moral reasoning is dependent on content of situation in personal context. |
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