During the Lebanon War (1982), many Israeli reserve soldiers disobeyed the command to join their units for service in Lebanon. Several of these soldiers were publicly labeled "sarvanim" meaning "refusers" in Hebrew, and were jailed in military prisons. Kohlberg's (1976) cognitive developmental approach to moralization, which…

This study examined effects of interpersonal and intrapersonal cognitive conflict tasks on 54 fifth and 18 seventh grade children's sociomoral rule awareness. Preconventional stage children 9 years of age were paired in same-sex dyads with 9- and 11-year-old children intermediate between preconventional and conventional stage reasoning. Six legal…

The purpose of this paper is to review the intellectual traits of egocentrism and perception dominance in young children 2 through 7 years of age and to explain, in a concrete way, how these two characteristics interact to greatly influence their ability to form logical and stable concepts. A secondary purpose is to suggest activities that may…

The application of Information Integration Theory (Anderson, 1981), a general model of social judgment, overcomes shortcomings in the evaluation of moral development by offering a clear distinction between moral values and reasoning. To test the applicability of Anderson's theory to moral development research, two experiments were conducted using…

Examined were the effects of story elements in teaching moral concepts to college freshmen and sophomores. The two story elements studied were (1) context (descriptions of observable circumstances and observable actions) and (2) substance (descriptions of the internal character, feelings, desires, and beliefs of the actor). A total of 59 students…

Factors which aid an individual's progression from one stage of moral reasoning to another remain a mystery. Theorists suggest that intraception, defined as a predominance of feeling, fantasy, and aspirations (connoting a humanistic outlook and an ability to develop role-taking skills) as opposed to a down-to-earth, skeptical attitude, may be an…

Despite the relevance of moral development to professional education, little research has been done to examine the application of moral development theory. To relate Analytic Interactive Style to post-formal operational thinking or "unitary operations thinking," to test the relationship between level of moral development and Analytic…

Measurements of formal reasoning and principled moral reasoning ability were obtained from a sample of 99 tenth grade students. Specific modes of formal reasoning (proportional reasoning, controlling variables, probabilistic, correlational and combinatorial reasoning) were first examined. Findings support the notion of hierarchical relationships…

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…

This presentation: (1) outlines three educational approaches to moral development; (2) explains Piaget's stages of moral judgment; (3) reviews Piaget's ideas about the development of children's concepts of justice; and (4) discusses comments by contemporary educators concerning moral education and its implications. Outlined in Part I are character…

Theories and studies of adult development are largely confined to adult male career development and ignore a moral or faith dimension of adult development. To determine the faith and moral dimension of adult couples, three hypotheses were examined, i.e.,: (1) religion is a significant dimension in their consciousness; (2) the family is integrally…

Western notions of right and wrong have dominated consideration of ethical issues in various domestic and remote cultural environments. A review of eight generalizations put forth by rhetorician Richard Johannesen on the ethics of rhetoric indicates that many scholars in contemporary speech communication believe that for people in other cultures…

This report describes a faculty development project carried out from 1978 to 1980 at Simon's Rock of Bard College, an experimental program for the younger than average college student. The project had three aims: (1) to develop practical methods of determining a student's position with respect to cognitive, moral, and ego development and to track…

Pragmatic and philosophical cases against codes of ethics for journalists and other mass media practitioners are proposed in this paper. After an examination of the First Amendment considerations related to media ethics, a distinction is made between moral philosophy and moralizing, and it is argued that most media codes tend to be moralistic in…

Social and ethnic differences in moral judgment are examined, and a critique of the cognitive-developmental model is presented in this paper. In opposition to Piaget and Kohlberg, the thesis advanced is that morality and moral development are culturally and socially determined constructs. While Piaget postulated the presence of qualitatively…