Ask whether a moral scoring scheme counts care and emotion as reasons

When a framework ranks how mature a person’s moral reasons are, check whether reasons grounded in relationships, feeling and loyalty were scored at all.

Por que funciona

Bataglia, Morais and Lepre (2010) report the critique, citing Carol Gilligan (1993), that Kohlberg’s theories concern only a male morality based on justice and devalue the affective dimension and emotions. Gilligan’s own book was not read for this page, so the claim rests on that report. Jaffee and Hyde (2000), in a meta-analysis (a statistical pooling of many studies), note that Gilligan (1982) argued for two modes of moral reasoning, justice and care, and tested whether either is used predominantly by one sex. They found small differences, favoring women on care and men on justice, and said these findings do not offer strong support for that sex-predominance claim. On this page’s reading, a scheme that counts only justice-based reasons would score a care-based reason as absent rather than as less developed, so the practice asks what a framework counts.

Como fazer

1. Take a framework that ranks moral reasons, and list the kinds of reason it names as more mature.
2. Identify whether any reasons grounded in care, relationship, loyalty or feeling appear at all, and where they are placed.
3. Write one real decision you made from a relationship reason, and ask whether the framework would score that reason as less developed or would not score it at all.
4. Decide whether the ranking reflects a view of what matters or a conclusion the framework built in before you looked.

Evidência

Bataglia, Morais and Lepre (2010) report the critique that Kohlberg’s theory concerns only male morality based on justice and devalues affect and emotions, citing Gilligan (1993), Campbell and Christopher (1996) and Flanagan (1996). Jaffee and Hyde (2000) report small differences in the care and justice orientations (d, a standardized effect size, of -.28 favoring females on care and .19 favoring males on justice) and conclude that these do not offer strong support for sex-predominant use of either. The studies concern the critique and the measured orientations, not the reading practice, which has not been tested. (mechanistic)

Gilligan’s argument is reported here through secondary sources because her book was not read for this page. The Jaffee and Hyde meta-analysis measures moral orientation in studies, which is not the same as a stage.

Fontes

• Bataglia, P. U. R., Morais, A. de, & Lepre, R. M. (2010). A teoria de Kohlberg sobre o desenvolvimento do raciocínio moral e os instrumentos de avaliação de juízo e competência moral em uso no Brasil. Estudos de Psicologia, 15(1), 25–32.
• Jaffee, S., & Hyde, J. S. (2000). Gender differences in moral orientation: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 126(5), 703–726.
• Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. The DOI cited is the 1993 Harvard printing. Bataglia et al. (2010) cite Gilligan (1993), a Portuguese translation (Rio de Janeiro: Rosa dos Ventos). Neither edition was read for this page.

Erro comum

Reading a framework that scores only fairness and rules as showing that relationship-based reasons are immature. The framework may simply not have counted them, and the absence of a score is itself a choice in the scheme.