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A critique and extension of Bronfenbrenner's Moral Dilemma Test
Author(s) -
Shepherd Gary
Publication year - 1977
Publication title -
international journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1464-066X
pISSN - 0020-7594
DOI - 10.1080/00207597708247390
Subject(s) - psychology , sanctions , dilemma , social psychology , moral dilemma , test (biology) , moral development , reading (process) , moral disengagement , peer pressure , developmental psychology , epistemology , law , paleontology , philosophy , political science , biology
Critical reading of Bronfenbrenner's Moral Dilemmas Test (MDT) suggests that it measures two basic kinds of moral dimensions: (1) “Negative‐passive” moral choices which require the child to resist peer pressure to violate conventional norms in situations fraught with potential adult sanctions, and (2) “Positive‐active” moral choices which require performance of an act that affirms a moral principle and implies a benefit for recipients of the act. To test the validity of these distinctions, additional positive‐active type dilemmas were constructed to balance the overemphasis on negative‐passive situations found in the original MDT. This expanded MDT was then administered to samples of Mormon, Catholic and public school children. Responses from all samples were subjected to factor and cluster analyses and then to a “multitrait‐multimethod matrix”. These analyses provide support for the need for making moral sub‐distinctions by producing item clusters that are consistently based on the a priori defined negative‐passive and positive‐active dimensions. A third dimension is also discernable among certain of the original MDT items, but it represents an achievement orientation of only‐secondary moral significance. Implications of these conceptual distinctions for linking different kinds of moral responses to different kinds of social contexts are discussed.