Moral Judgment Among Chinese Urban and Rural Students: Exploring the Conflict Between the Personal and Moral Domains

The U-shaped development pattern in social cognitive domain theory can explain adolescents' "moral retrogression" in a certain period. This study employs quantitative methods to investigate moral judgments made by Chinese urban and rural junior high school students in situations involving conflicts between the personal and moral domains, thereby cross-culturally validating the proposed U-shaped pattern. The results show that this pattern exhibits some degree of cross-cultural applicability. Specifically, grades 8-9 represent a transitional phase in the moral development of Chinese students from both urban and rural areas. Students in the grade 9 tend to defend their personal domain when in conflict with the moral domain. However, the content and scope of the moral and personal domains may vary across cultures. When urban students encounter conflicts between the personal and moral domains, they tend to protect the personal domain. Furthermore, Chinese students have a strong sense of self-defense awareness, and when the target of their behavior is an immoral person in a specific context, it significantly increases their support for non-moral behaviors. This knowledge may be valuable for educators and policy-makers seeking to design moral educational programs aimed at promoting moral behavior among adolescents.