Judge the reasons someone gave, not the sex they are
Before reading a colleague’s position as “caring” or “principled” because of who they are, check what they actually argued.
Por qué funciona
Jaffee and Hyde tested the claim that the care orientation is used mainly by women and the justice orientation mainly by men. Across studies they found small differences in each direction: care favoring females (d = .28 in magnitude) and justice favoring males (d = .19). Here d is a standardized measure of the gap between two group averages. Moderator variables, meaning study characteristics that explain differences between studies, accounted for 16% and 17% of the variance (the share of variation) in those effect sizes. On this page’s reading, a gap this size means the two groups overlap heavily, so a person’s stated reasons may tell more about their lens than their sex does. That step is this page’s inference from the effect sizes, not a conclusion the authors state.
Cómo hacerlo
- Notice when you have already labeled someone as “the caring one” or “the rules one”.
- Write the reason they gave for their position, in their words.
- Ask whether you would reach the same label if they had said the same thing and were a different person.
- Change the label only when their reasons, not their identity, support it.
Evidencia
Jaffee and Hyde (2000) is a meta-analysis (a pooled statistical analysis of many studies) of moral orientation. It reports small average sex differences and says that its findings do not offer strong support for sex-linked use of the two orientations. The practice itself has not been tested; the observational level grades only that sex-difference premise. (observational)
A meta-analysis describes averages across the studies it gathered and says nothing about any single person’s lens. Moderators explained only 16–17% of the variance in effect sizes, so much of the variation is unexplained.
Fuentes
Error común
Treating the sex-difference finding as proof that one particular person reasons in one particular way. The finding is about averages across studies.
Practica esto con IX Coach
Más prácticas para Carol Gilligan’s Ethics of Care, Explained
- Look at one decision through justice and through care
Take one decision you face and ask it twice: what does fairness require, and what do the people involved need from me?
- Check who carries the caring load before calling it care
When a decision is framed as caring for others, ask who ends up doing the caring and what it costs them.
- Name the specific people a decision makes you responsible to
Before settling on a principle, list the particular people you are responsible to and what each one is counting on from you.
- Retell a hard choice as a story of relationships over time
Before stating the rule that settles a hard choice, tell it as a sequence of relationships: who depends on whom, and how that has changed.
- Trace a caring task through noticing, owning, doing and receiving
Follow one act of care through four phases: noticing the need, taking responsibility for it, doing the work, and seeing how it is received.
- Receive the person on their own terms before judging their need
Before deciding what someone needs, take up their situation as they describe it and set aside your own motives for helping.
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- The Construct-Aware and Unitive Stages of Adult Development
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- Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development, Made Practical
Six stages of moral reasoning, how they are scored, and how to work with the reasons you give