The purpose of this study is to examine the developmental patterns of adolescents' judgements of nonpermissibility and rule independence behaviors in moral, conventional, personal, and multifaceted events, and to analyze their judgement justification ...
The purpose of this study is to examine the developmental patterns of adolescents' judgements of nonpermissibility and rule independence behaviors in moral, conventional, personal, and multifaceted events, and to analyze their judgement justification criteria.
The questions raised in this study are as follow:
First, is there any difference in adolescents' judgements of nonpermissibility on morally transgressive behaviors with reference to grade and domain?
second, is there any difference in adolescents' judgements of rule independence on morally transgressive behaviors with reference to grade and domain?
Third, is there any difference in adolescents' justifications for their judgements with reference to grade and domain?
Subjects in this study were 280 adolescents sampled from a primary school, a
junior high school, a girls' junior high school, a senior high school and girls'
senior high school and three universities located in Pusan area. The number of male and female subjects was the same in each group.
The tool used in this study was 16 vignetts describing transgressive behaviors in moral, conventional, personal, and multificated events (4 in each event) developed by the author based on Turiel(1978). Each event was follow by questions for nonpermissibility, rule independence, and justification.
From the results and discussions of this study the following conclusions were obtained:
First, the degree of nonpermissibility judgement is different by grade and domain. In moral domain, high degree of nonpermissibility is revealed from elementary school years and maintaines to college years. On the contrary, in conventional domain, the degree of nonpermissibility decreases from high school years. Nonpermissibility in personal domain abumptly decreases between elementary, and high school years. However, no decrease appears between high school and college years.
Second, the degree of rule independence judgement is different by grade and domain. In moral domain, high degree of rule independence judgement is revealed from elementary school years and maintains to college years. On the contrary, in conventional domain, the rule independence judgement rapidly decreases from senior high school years. In personal domain the decrease appears form junior high school years.
Third, adolescents' justifications for their judgement is different by domain. Moral criterion is distinctive in moral domain; whereas frequency of moral and conventional criteria is similar in conventional and multifaceted event. Both moral and personal criteria are used frequently in personal domain.
Fourth, adolescents' moral and conventional justification criteria in moral, conventional, and personal domains decrease with grade, whereas personal criterion increases. On the contrary, in multifaceted domain, moral criterion decreases with the increase of conventional criterion.