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Judging social issues: difficulties, inconsistencies, and consistencies
Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development
|January 1, 1991
Summary
Reasoning about controversial topics like abortion and homosexuality differs from moral issues. Ambiguous assumptions underlie inconsistent judgments on nonprototypical issues, impacting personal and legal evaluations.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Moral Development
- Social Cognition
Background:
- Previous research distinguished reasoning in moral, social conventional, and personal domains.
- This study investigates reasoning on nonprototypical issues: abortion, homosexuality, pornography, and incest.
- Nonprototypical issues were hypothesized to elicit different reasoning patterns than prototypical ones.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine reasoning differences between prototypical and nonprototypical moral issues.
- To explore inconsistencies and ambiguities in reasoning about nonprototypical issues.
- To identify the role of informational assumptions in judgments about controversial topics.
Main Methods:
- Three studies involving high school and college students, including practicing Catholics.
- Assessment of criterion judgments (evaluations, contingency, generalizability) and justifications.
- Preselection of participants based on positive or negative evaluations of nonprototypical issues.
Main Results:
- Groups differed in judgments on nonprototypical issues but not moral issues.
- Reasoning on nonprototypical issues involved inconsistent judgments and ambiguous assumptions.
- Positive evaluations linked to legality and personal choice justifications; negative evaluations showed varied reasoning.
Conclusions:
- Ambiguity in informational assumptions is central to the nonprototypicality of abortion and homosexuality.
- Reasoning about nonprototypical issues is characterized by inconsistency and subjective justifications.
- Bidirectional relations exist between individual judgments and group stances on controversial topics.