Cultural and Gender Differences in Moral Judgment: A Study of Mexican Americans and Anglo-Americans

Abstract

Kohlberg’s theory of moral development regards justice concerns as developmentally more advanced than interpersonal considerations. Men tend to score as more morally developed than women on existing measures. Gilligan suggested that this is because women rely more on “care” considerations in moral dilemmas, whereas men rely more on “justice” issues. Snarey noted similar bias in the cross-cultural realm. The authors studied moral judgment in Mexican American (n = 40) and Anglo-American (n = 40) college students. On the care measure, as expected, females scored higher than males (p < .05), and Mexican Americans scored higher than Anglo-Americans (p < .01) Contrary to expectation, no differences were obtained on the justice measure. The role of socialization in moral development is discussed.