Some Correlates of Maturity of Moral Reasoning in Finland

Abstract

The relationship of Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning to various forms of social participation, family size, and responsibility-related responses to moral judgmental and projective story completion tasks was studied in two samples of Finnish preadolescents, adolescents, and young adults. Peer-rated leadership, number of leadership roles, and number of siblings were found to be associated with advances in moral stages for all age groups. Persons at each higher stage of moral structure more often attributed responsibility for the consequences of inaction in their moral judgments and in projective guilt responses and saw their consciences as being more active. Projective guilt over inaction was more clearly related to moral stage in females than in males. Females also showed greater guilt over cheating than males at all stage levels. The intensity of guilt over cheating increased up to Stage 3, but not beyond it, for both sexes. The results are interpreted as supporting both Kohlberg's theory and the existence of an orientation to responsibility in women, as suggested by Gilligan (1982).

Empathy, guilt, and gender: A comparison of two measures of guilt

“…The Hoffman inaction scenario (not helping a lost child) is closer to the feminine form of helping, even though it takes place in a public setting. This is consistent with the finding that guilt over not helping was related to Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning only for girls (Helkama & Ikonen, 1986).…”

“…Hoffman used this guilt measure originally to refute psychoanalytical claim of girls’ weaker moral internalization, and showed that girls actually had a stronger proclivity to guilt than boys (Hoffman, 1975). Since then this measure has been used very rarely in empirical studies, one exception being Helkama's and Ikonen's study (1986), which showed a connection between Hoffman's guilt measure and Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning (Kohlberg, 1984). However, this measure is interesting because the respondents have to produce the reaction independently, whereas in most measures they can choose from a set of predefined alternatives.…”

“…Also Hoffman's guilt measure can be expected to relate to perspective‐taking and empathic concern. It has been found to relate to Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning (Helkama & Ikonen, 1986). Cognitive role‐taking, indeed, is a central concept in Kohlberg's (1984) cognitive‐developmental theory of moral judgment, in which each successive stage represents increasing ability to coordinate other people's perspectives with one’ own.…”

“…Consistent with the notion of higher care orientation in women, higher correlations between developmental measures of the ethic of care and ego development have been found for women than for men (e.g., Skoe & Diessner, 1994; but not always, see Skoe & Lippe, 2002), which suggests that care ethic is more important to women than to men in terms of their identity. Higher correlations for women than for men have also been reported between Kohlberg's developmental moral judgment stages and emotional empathy (Juujärvi, 2003), as well as between Kohlberg's stages and the Hoffman measure of guilt over inaction (Helkama & Ikonen, 1986). Furthermore, Eisenberg, Zhou and Koller (2001) found that perspective‐taking predicted prosocial moral judgment for boys but not for girls, and other‐oriented empathy mediated the connection between perspective taking and prosocial moral judgment for girls but not for boys.…”

“…The present study relates the dimensions of empathy to two measures of guilt, the TOSCA by Tangney and the Hoffman story completion measure. The two story completion scenarios are analyzed separately, because based on previous results (Helkama & Ikonen, 1986), they can be expected to show a different pattern of connections to other variables. These guilt measures were chosen because they can be expected to measure empathy‐based guilt that is likely to motivate moral or prosocial behavior.…”