A descriptive analysis and content comparison of young children's dilemma stories and Piaget's, Kohlberg's and Rest's moral dilemmas

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the content of dilemmas that were spontaneously produced by children and to make descriptive comparisons of the content of the children's dilemmas with the content of standard moral dilemmas that have been used most often in moral reasoning studies. To accomplish this purpose 33 third-graders and 31 fifth-graders were asked to write or relate a realistic moral dilemma following instructions on dilemma components: An individual or group faced with a people problem must make a correct choice of action. Standard dilemmas used in research by J. Piaget, L. Kohlberg and J.R. Rest were transcribed from primary sources. Trained observers rated each dilemma according to content characteristics: presence, sex and social relationships of identifiable characters; character's intentions, behaviors and consequences along a prosocial/antisocial dimension; moral issue and conflicting values; and representativeness of the dilemmas. Results indicated that dilemmas written by the third- and fifth-graders differed from those used by researchers. Children's dilemmas were likely to be about family or friends with prosocial intentions and behaviors. Children's conflicts were of the approach-avoidance type centering around interpersonal relations and the quality of life. Children usually wrote social rather than moral dilemmas that frequently and typically could occur in real people's lives. The researchers favored male characters, as did the male children, but overall the children's dilemmas were more evenly distributed among male and female characters. Piaget's dilemmas included more family relationships and interpersonal relations issues, while Kohlberg's and Rest's dilemmas included authority relationships more often than the children's dilemmas. Kohlberg's and Rest's dilemmas were judged to occur more rarely, to fewer people and with more serious implications than either the children's of Piaget's dilemmas.