Relationship between moral reasoning and perception of responsibility in adolescents
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2002 |
| Type | R&D Presentation |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Our research carried out at adolescents refers to the effect of moral dilemmas reasoning on perceived responsibility. We suppose that there exist different kinds of responsibility according to the way how close to self-system of an individual it is. A sample consisted of 213 participants (108 girls and 105 boys, almost 92% were aged between 15 - 17 years). They should name at least three situations in which they or somebody else did something good/ bad. We have focused solely on statements in which participants described their own behavior.There was also used a moral dilemma concerning the abortion with eight alternative solutions: four of them justified the abortion and four gave reasons against it. The results showed that our participants described their responsible/ irresponsible action towards specific people or they emphasised an internal rule according to which they understood their behavior as good or bad. We also found out that both girls and boys who described themselves as "responsible" to internal rule showed significantly less agreement with preconventional reasoning. In comparison with this, the participants who still mention the object of their responsibility indicated higher agreement with this reasoning. These results support our hypothesis, as well as the fact, that girls and boys describing themselves as "irresponsible" to internal rule showed higher agreement with postconventional reasoning. |
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