Provera teorije o dva aspekta moralnosti na uzorku građana Srbije

Abstract

The main goal of this study is to verify Lind’s Dual-Aspect Theory of Morality on Serbian population. The Lind's Moral Judgment Test (MJT), based on this theory, consists of two dilemmas and aims at estimating cognitive (moral competency) and affective aspect (moral preference) of moral judgement. The validity of the Serbian version of the test was verified through the criteria based on the modification of Lind's main hypotheses and pillars of the cognitive development theory (hierarchical preference, quasi-simplex structure of intercorrelation and affectivecognitive parallelism). These criteria have proven to be very effective in cross-cultural validation of MJT in more than 30 languages. The Serbian version of the test at hand, validated by its very author, is included as well. All of the mentioned criteria, having been verified on a sample, have been checked on subsamples according to gender and the level of education, but also on data produced separately, on two dilemmas. The data have been collected on a respective sample amounting up to 180 of both genders. There were 45 people per each educational level encompassed (second and third year of high school and second and fourth year of faculty). Data processing methods included descriptive statistics, measures of relationship and multivariate techniques (hierarchical regression, ANOVA, factor analysis). The results, although with minor deviations, support the hypothesis about the hierarchical preference, where the argument preference of stage 4 is the most noticeable one. The criteria verification on dilemmas separately, provided the same results as when verifying criteria on both dilemmas. However, there was a difference – Workers dilemma resulted the most in adopting arguments of stage 4, while Doctor dilemma resulted the most in adopting arguments of stage 6. The hierarchical preference of stages is quite similar between samples of men and women and reflects, to a great extent, the argument preference of the whole sample on both dilemmas. The criterion of hierarchical preference was also verified on subsamples of different educational levels, and, also as expected, it rose along with the educational level. The verification of the hypothesis which indicated the existence of quasi-simplex structures, resulted in the confirmation on the Serbian validation sample, and, the existence of deviations related to saturation inversion of stage 1 and 2, did not affect the criterion validity. The results related to separate dilemmas and subsamples according to gender are in line with the predictions, and the inversions and deviations can be considered as minimal, without influence on criteria validity. The validation of criteria was done also on subsamples according to educational levels, and the biggest deviation from the hypothesis is present in the second year of high school students. As in the above mentioned criteria, when verifying the last criterion – cognitive-affective parallelism, the deviations which appeared did not affect the validation of this criterion. The hypothesis of parallelism of two aspects was verified based on the results received on two dilemmas separately, as well as on those results received on the sample of different gender (the cognitive-affective parallelism gave a clearer picture in the females). When this criterion was verified on the subsample according to the educational level, it was most noticeable on the results received in the fourth year of the secondary school students, while the intercorrelation variation of the quasi-simplex structure was most noticeable in the second year faculty students. The findings of numerous investigations point to the fact that, in order to have a complete and deeper understanding of moral behaviour of people, certain cognitive and noncognitive variables need to be encompassed. Therefore, the next task in the paper tested the integral structural model which predicted the moral action (indicator – whether a person committed a criminal act), based on the relations among foundations of morality and its ties (ability of moral rationing, moral attitudes, moral emotions, cognitive distortions and locus of control). Therefore, the stability of these results was verified on subsamples according to sociodemographic variables (gender, age, education, marital status). For their verification, apart from Lind's MJT, the following instruments were used: Emotional Empathy Scale, Test of Self-conscious Affect (TOSCAA), How I think Questionnaire (HIT-Q) and Internality, Powerful Others and Chance Scales (IPC Scales). The sample numbered 393 people of both genders, aged 19 - 65. Out of this number, 80 of them were imprisoned due to criminal activities involving goods. While processing data, at this stage, apart from the descriptive statistics and the measure of relationship, multivariate techniques have been used as well (linear and hierarchical regression, factor analysis, structural equation modelling). The results show that the Lind theoretical model is not in line with the empirical data and that C score does not have a statistically relevant effect on the criterion variable. Further on, due to numerous variables in the model and its complexity, the set of analyses was done, which resulted in the final model which was both verified theoretically and empirically. The results showed that the model which is the most wellbecoming, apart from the moral reasoning stages and C score, amounts up to the factor score made of locus of control with external orientation and cognitive distortion (which surfaced as the most protruding), and the moral emotion of shame. The other two moral emotions, as well as the internal locus of control, have an indirect influence. The model explains 19% of variance of the criterion variable for criminal act. Finally, significant differences were registered related to predicting criminal acts based on suggested model of moral action depending on the sub causes of group types of the sample. The suggested combination of variables implies the biggest prediction on the subsample, aged 31 - 40 (37%), then on the subsample of males (34%), while their contribution is the lowest on the subsample related to whether they have a faculty degree (7%). In general, the results are in favour of the Lind theory on Serbian population. In the second part of the study, the results show that the model which includes all of the verified variables, explains around 19% of variance of their variability.