THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POLITICAL PREFERENCE AND MORAL JUDGMENT DEVELOPMENT IN LATE ADOLESCENCE

Considerable evidence suggests that moral judgments are related to political/social issues and to conservative versus liberal political orientations, but much less is known about the relationship between moral judgments and political choices. To address this issue, adolescents of voting age (n = 128) were surveyed about their perceptions of the election issues, candidates, and their voting intentions two weeks prior to the 1988 U.S. presidential elections. Rest's Defining issues Test (DIT) of moral judgment development also was administered. Consistent with theoretical predictions, a curvilinear function was the most appropriate fit to the data. In addition, the common links between political party identification, liberal versus conservative ideology, and political variables could not account for the moral judgment and political choice relationship. Further, subjects who differed on the DIT attended to different election issues in defining their election decision.