| Summary: | 碩士 === 中原大學 === 心理學研究所 === 101 === In Piaget’s research, individual judgment in moral dilemma, he found that children from the initial judgment for behavior focus on specific results. With age, they could know the intention of the actors. Kohlberg continued Piaget’s moral judgment study, developed a six-stage theory of moral development. The theory is that the development trend of individual moral judgments based on behavioral consequences as the most important mode of thinking. Individuals will be higher level of their moral when they tend to use more as a thinking based on moral principles. But following studies have found individual moral judgments are influenced by differences of perspective and gender. In the differences of perspective side, past researches about perspective obtained three different approaches. The First approach concluded that the individuals have more consequence in self perspective than in others perspective. The second approach concluded that individuals have more principle in self perspective than in others perspective. The last one concluded there’s no difference between self and others perspective. In the gender side, Kohlberg thought that the growth of moral stage means one has more understanding about principle thinking. But Gilligan thought female are tend to deal with the dilemma with care perspective, focusing on the relationship between maintenance and response needs of others. Therefore, female are tend to consider consequence. In previous research of moral judgment influenced by cognitive development, different perspective and gender of age has not been consistent results. Hence, this study uses two moral dilemmas (truth dilemma/ signature dilemma ) as research materials. In experiment one, researcher investigates attempt to explore two parts, first, individuals behavior are based on moral principle or behavioral consequence when they standing on their own / others’ perspective. In addition, the researcher also investigates whether age or gender factors that may affect the individual's judgment. Second, in the past research of perspective obtained three approaches by different methods, so researcher uses the same dilemmas as research base to understand which approach tend to be supported by this experiment. Experiment two extended the results of experiment one, to investigate that individuals who use moral principles or behavioral consequence as behavior basis, whether their re-choice of behavior will be different when they know the actual consequence or not.
The results of experiment one are not consistent with the original hypothesizes, most participants tend to use moral principle as behavior basis. However, in consideration of others perspective, the proportion of consequence basis has increased trend. It may reflect when participants stand on others perspective, they think that others should act in the dilemma; however they may consider other factors and lead to fail. Therefore, the results tend to support individual has self-righteous bias in the experimental one. In the other hand, experiment two results meet the original hypothesizes. Individuals who take moral principle as behavior basis won’t change their choices even they recognize the outcome are bad messages. Individuals who take behavioral consequence as behavior basis will tend to change their original decision once the results come bad. Possible reasons for individuals to reduce the uncomfortable feelings caused by cognitive dissonance, they achieve their cognitive balanced by changing or reinforcing original behavior. Therefore, individuals who use consequence as behavior basis have higher changing rate than whose use moral principle as behavior basis when the results are not the same with the original expectations.
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