Research on the Happy Victimizer Phenomenon has mainly focused on preschool and schoolchildren, with a few studies also including adolescents and young adults. The main finding is that young children, despite knowing that harming someone is wrong, ascribe positive feelings to perpetrators and offer hedonistic justifications, interpreted as a lack…

Current models of moral functioning such as those of Rest (1983) and Damon and Hart (1988) have maintained that optimal moral development and consistent moral action require the presence of multiple constructs. In order to examine the importance of the presence of multiple variables relevant to moral functioning, structural equation modeling was…

Investigated the effects of gender, gender role, and type of moral dilemma on moral maturity and orientation of university students. Found that females were more consistent than males in moral stage; males were more consistent in moral orientation. Findings suggest that a more interactional model of moral judgment than the models of L. Kohlberg…

Black and White college students (N=232) were given either the Defining Issues Test (DIT) or a revised DIT in which the protagonists were Black. Racial manipulation did not appear to affect the emotional distance of White subjects from the dilemmas; emotional responses of Black participants were more intense and stressful when the dilemma…

Author reflects upon her own professional development, how psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg influenced the formation of a new kind of educator, and how her current interest in the valuing process of college students and professionals has been shaped. (Author)

The present study investigates whether epistemic cognition in moral domain (dubbed "metaethical cognition") develops analogously to epistemic reasoning regarding empirical knowledge. The study's conceptual framework distinguishes two main areas of metaethical cognition (beliefs about the nature of moral judgments and conceptions of the process of…

Research on moral development from a cognitive-developmental perspective has been undertaken predominantly with Western subjects and most often with males. To investigate variables associated with moral reasoning among Palestinian Arabs, 259 male and female university students between the ages of 18 and 26 completed Rest's Defining Issues Test…

Examined the theoretical relationship between moral development and black racial identity development among 182 African American college students at a predominantly white institution. Student surveys indicated that racial identity and moral judgements were linked and that emotionality embedded within black racial identity statuses differentially…

Applying Snyder and Feldman's 1984 consolidation-transition model to moral judgement development has enabled further understanding of how moral judgement translates to moral functioning. In this study, 178 college students were identified as being in consolidated versus transitional phases of moral judgement development using Rest's Defining…

Found peer-counseling training for Black students in a predominantly White university to be significant in furthering psychological growth. There was movement in the areas of moral reasoning and ego development as measured by the Defining Issues Test and the Sentence Completion Test. Advocates providing programs aimed at improving psychological…

In an attempt to understand human aggressive behavior, psychologists have explored and emphasized variables related to the aggressor, the victim, and the situation, e.g., intentions of the aggressor and the consequences for the victim. Observer-related variables, such as level of moral reasoning have not been studied. To examine the relationship…

Reviews ethical implications of administrative decisions. Presents several cases to illustrate the potential conflict between the political (doing things right) and the ethical (doing the right thing). Presents a model that helps the administrator identify the extent to which administrative dilemmas impinge on moral considerations. (KW)

Reviews three studies of high school and college students' reasoning about nonprototypical issues in the context of the development and differentiation of evaluative domains. Considers possible answers to questions concerning the organization and functioning of moral thought in relation to the studies' findings. Suggests future directions for…

This study compares the moral development of college students who have been involved in repeated behavioral offenses with those who have not. Sixteen female and 13 male students from a Southern research university participated by taking the Defining Issues Test. The paper reports that a significant difference in moral development was found between…

In samples of 1,005 adolescents and adults in Hong Kong and 281 adolescents and adults in London (England), Moral Development Test patterns conform to that predicted by L. Kohlberg's stage theory of moral development (1969), but the degree of association between the stages differed between cultures. (SLD)