APPLICATION OF MORAL JUSTIFICATION SCALE TO INVESTIGATE CARE AND JUSTICE ORIENTATIONS AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

Human development has always been an area which attracted the attention of many educationists and educational psychologists as it has great impact on education and teaching training. A wealth of research has been conducted from various angles and perspectives in these areas of educational interests. The present study also aimed to investigate care and justice orientations among university students to test Gilligan’s theory in order to find out difference in care and justice orientations of male and female students. Research increasingly suggests that there are limitations to Kohlberg's theory of moral development. Gilligan, in particular, has observed that Kohlberg's theory considers abstract principled reasoning as the highest level of moral judgment, and penalizes those who focus on the interpersonal ramifications of a moral decision. Gilligan calls these orientations as justice and care orientations. She asserted that a woman's sense of moral development came from connections to other people, rather than separation from them. Her purpose was to find a second dimension for female moral reasoning by showing that previous studies were done predominately with males in mind. The present study therefore sought to test her theory in Pakistan by using the Moral Justification Scale, developed by Baker and Roll (2000), an objective measure of both orientations. The objectives of the study were to measure the care and justice orientations among university students and to compare male and female students on both orientations in order to test Gilligan’s theory. It was hypothesized that there was no significant difference between mean care orientation and justice orientation scores of male and female students of the university and there was no significant difference between mean justice orientation scores of male and female students.The population of the study consisted of the 1300 students (566 male and 734 female) of University of Wah (Pakistan). A sample of 100 students, 50 male and 50 female students, was randomly selected as a sample from the students willing to participate in the study. The Moral Justification Scale was adapted according to Pakistani culture and individually administered on university students who were asked to read each dilemma carefully and respond to the statements given at the end of each dilemma. The collected data were scored, and the groups were compared by using the statistical techniques of mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variation, degree of overlapping and t-test. The level of significance for testing the null hypotheses was preset at .05. The study results showed that female students as whole were more care oriented than male students while both genders did not clearly differ on justice orientation. The evidence from this psychological research has shown that females were more likely to appeal to principles of care when examining the moral imperative when determining what one ought to do. Though, both males and female used the ethic of justice and care; females were found to view the interpersonal issues of a situation as more important. Male students, on the average, were not found to be that much justice oriented in their moral judgments, as females were inclined toward care orientation. However, 14 % male students were ahead of average girl students in care orientation. The study thus partially supports Gilligan’s theory.