What does principled versus conventional moral reasoning convey to others about the politics and psychology of the reasoner?

Abstract

The well-documented relationship between political orientation and moral reasoning has most often been interpreted in terms of the in¯uence of level of moral development (cf. Kohlberg, 1984) upon an individual's political inclinations: those who have reached the conventional level (or stage 4) in Kohlberg's terms will as a result tend to favour the political right, whereas those who progress to the principled level (stage 5) shift their political preferences to the left. An alternative,`social communication' view is that these dierent forms of moral reasoning are expressions of contrasting political identities, and dier in ideological content rather than developmental level. We compared the inferences that American and British students (n 211) drew about the political, moral and cognitive attributes of a target who, in response to moral dilemmas, used either stage 4A, stage 4B or stage 5 moral arguments as de®ned by Kohlberg. Perception of the target's political attributes varied consistently and signi®cantly as a function of the target's moral reasoning, but there were no corresponding eects on perception of moral or cognitive attributes. The results are interpreted as supporting a social communication view of moral reasoning and its relation to political orientation, and at the same time questioning the claim that conventional (stage 4) and principled (stage 5) moral reasoning are distinct levels of socio-cognitive development. Copyright # 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.It has been a longstanding ambition in psychology to identify psychological determinants of political preferences and loyalties. What causes people to support particular political parties and their policies, to vote for the representatives of one political party rather than another, or to hold particular views of political issues and controversies? The questions can be simpli®ed somewhat insofar as political parties, voting

The Sense of Entitlement to Violate the Law: Legal Disobedience as a Public Versus a Private Reaction

“…A higher level of moral reasoning was found to be associated with left-wing political orientation. These results are similar to findings of previous studies on the relationship of moral reasoning and political orientation (Elmer, Renwick, & Malone, 1983;Elmer & Stace, 1999;Raaijmakers, Verbogt, & Vollebergh, 1998).…”

Political Identification and the Defining Issues Test: Reevaluating an Old Hypothesis

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Morality and political orientations: An analysis of their relationship

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