Moral Reasoning and the Use of Procedural Justice Rules in Hypothetical and Real-Life Dilemmas

Abstract

The use of Leventhal's procedural justice rules in moral judgments was examined (1) in the match examples of the Colby and Kohlberg moral judgment interview manual (Study 1), (2) in hypothetical dilemmas given to a sample of 41 participants in professional ethics classes, and (3) in the real-life moral dilemmas produced by this sample (Study 2). Consistent support was found for the hypothesis that bias suppression is used more frequently at the higher moral reasoning stages. A higher number of justice rules were employed in solving a real-life than hypothetical moral problem, and most procedural justice rules were used more frequently in the real-life dilemma.