Social influence on group moral decisions: the interactive effects of moral reasoning and sex role orientation

In this study, we examined the effects of moral reasoning level and sex role orientation on social influence in group decision making. We predicted that these two individual difference constructs would have an interactive effect such that people who are compatible or nonconflicted on the two dimensions would have more influence on a group task with moral implications than would people who are conflicted. All subjects individually completed a distributive decision task that required ranking terminally ill patients for access to a life-saving kidney machine. They then met in small groups and reached a group decision on the same task. The subjects' moral reasoning level and sex role orientation--assessed via the Rest Defining Issues Test (Rest, 1979) and the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1974), respectively--were used to predict influence on the group decision. Influence was measured in three ways: similarity between individual and group ranks, self-rated influence, and selection of the most influential group member. The results of all three influence measures provided support for the interactive hypothesis. In the discussion we consider the implications of the data for individual difference models of moral reasoning, the need for further understanding of goal competition and personality conflict, and the importance of considering the impact of moral factors on group decision-making proceses.