Abstract
According to Heller and Życiński (1980) the primary regulator of human behaviour is the system of values therefore its development should be in the centre of all educational and upbringing measures. Our focus here is on moral sensitivity understood as the ability of an individual to see social situations from the perspective of moral good and moral evil that represent values embodied in moral norms adopted by the world and internalised by humans as the principles of conduct. The main research question was the following: How morally sensitive are persons with ID and how is their sensitivity associated with the degree of intellectual disability and gender? A non-probability sample 267 of Polish residents aged 16-30 years with mild (58.42%) or moderate (41.58%) intellectual disability was assembled. Men and women were almost in equal proportion. The Moral Sensitivity Inventory (MSI; Otrębski, Sudoł, 2020) has been used to measure the moral sensitivity of people with ID. It consists of 10 illustrated stories presenting typical social situations containing moral dilemmas, and an evaluation form. The tested person’s task is to answer the following question “Who, in this story, did something right or wrong, and what was that?” and to indicate as many moral elements in the story and the picture as they can. The results imply that the study participants had different ability to discern moral good and moral evil. They were more sensitive to the manifestations of good and evil bad associated with Understanding one’s behaviour and its impact on others (more than one-fourth of them had high scores) and less perceptive of those relating to Respect for others’ property and Conformance to principles and norms. The results of the study expand the knowledge of the overall moral sensitivity of persons with intellectual disabilities.
Highlights
The main focus of the article is moral sensitivity understood as the ability of an individual to see social situations from the perspective of moral good and moral evil that represent values embodied in moral norms adopted by the world and internalised by humans as the principles of conduct
His study led him to the following conclusions: (1) the moral sensitivity of adolescents with intellectual disability (ID) was lower than that of the comparative peers; (2) unlike ordinary adolescents, those with ID recognized the manifestations of moral good and moral evil but they could not explain why people behave in a good or bad way; (3) there was an association between a person’s level of moral sensitivity of an individual and their intelligence, age, life experience, and emotions (Witkowski, 1967, 1994)
The research hypothesis tested was that: the level of moral sensitivity of the study participants would be statistically significantly associated with the degree of their intellectual disability
Summary
The main focus of the article is moral sensitivity understood as the ability of an individual to see social situations from the perspective of moral good and moral evil that represent values embodied in moral norms adopted by the world and internalised by humans as the principles of conduct. In the development of moral sensitivity, moral experience is secondary to the cognitive and emotional spheres, but it is still indispensable (Frisancho & Delgado, 2018; Wong, 2020) From the above it follows that the moral sensitivity of a person depends on their personality and external factors that, according Mitty (2010), include the person’s life history, culture, religion, education, emotions, and relationships with. His study led him to the following conclusions: (1) the moral sensitivity of adolescents with ID was lower than that of the comparative peers; (2) unlike ordinary adolescents, those with ID recognized the manifestations of moral good and moral evil but they could not explain why people behave in a good or bad way; (3) there was an association between a person’s level of moral sensitivity of an individual and their intelligence, age, life experience, and emotions (Witkowski, 1967, 1994). As the number of studies dealing with moral sensitivity of persons ID is still insufficient for definite and firm conclusions to be formulated, the need to continue research in this area is evident
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