Gender and dilemma differences in real-life moral judgment

The authors investigated the effects of gender, gender role, and type of moral dilemma on moral maturity and moral orientation. Fifty-five female and 55 male university students were given the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (J. T. Spence & R. L. Helmreich, 1978), L. Kohlberg's test of moral judgment, and instructions to discuss a personal and impersonal real-life moral dilemma. Moral stage, moral orientation, and the relation between them varied across dilemmas. Females were more consistent than males in moral stage; males were more consistent in moral orientation. Females made higher stage and more care-based moral judgments than males made on personal real-life dilemmas. The observed variations occurred primarily because males reported more Stage 2, justice-pulling antisocial dilemmas than females, and females reported more Stage 3, care-pulling prosocial dilemmas than males. A more interactional model of moral judgment than the models of L. Kohlberg and C. Gilligan is recommended.