Presidential Scholars Theses (1990 – 2006)

Awards/Availabilty

Open Access Presidential Scholars Thesis

First Advisor

Carolyn Hilderbrandt, Advisor

Keywords

Medical ethics--Sex differences;

Abstract

Twenty Midwestern Caucasian college students, ten males and ten females, were tested on justice and care orientations when reasoning about hypothetical moral dilemmas involving the care of elderly family members. A slightly modified version of the dilemma developed in Stack's (1990) study was used along with a new dilemma developed by the author of this study to further clarify the coding process. Lyons' (1983) scoring method and Gilligan's (1982) guidelines were used to code subjects' responses. No sex differences in the type of moral reasoning were found. The results of this study did not support Gilligan's theory that there are two distinct ways of thinking about moral problems, justice reasoning and care reasoning, that are related to gender. They did, however, support Stack's results that the predominate reasoning used in both males and females is a mixture of care and justice reasoning. It was concluded, based on Stack's research and the results of this study, that no sex differences in moral reasoning are present when using the hypothetical dilemmas developed by Stack's subjects and this author.

Date of Award

1995

Department

Department of Psychology

Presidential Scholar Designation

A paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation Presidential Scholar

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this Presidential Scholars thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit an email request to scholarworks@uni.edu. Include your name and clearly identify the thesis by full title and author as shown on the work.

Date Original

1995

Object Description

1 PDF file (25 pages)

Date Digital

3-29-2018

Copyright

©1995 Denise Literrer

Type

document

Language

EN

File Format

application_pdf

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