Leadership, cross‐cultural contact, socio‐economic status, and formal operational reasoning about moral dilemmas among Mexican non‐literate adults and high school students

Abstract

Kohlberg proposed that various cultural, social and educational factors may influence moral reasoning. As far as the authors know, participants in previous studies of moral reasoning have been, largely, educated persons, irrespective of their culture. Two studies on moral reasoning were conducted in a Mexican–United States border city. The first study found that even some unschooled, non‐literate adults reason at a high stage (formal operations, Moral 3/4). Exposure to different cultural and organizational contexts, in addition to assumption of leadership roles, was associated with such reasoning. Likewise, the second study found that high school students who were identified as leaders, especially those with cross‐cultural contact and those who were of high socio‐economic status, reasoned at higher stages than those who were not. Overall, stage of reasoning increased with age.

Acknowledgements

These studies were supported in part by grants from the Dare Association Inc, ‘A cross‐cultural study of intellectual development of Mexicans’ to the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and from grants from Universidad Autónoma en Baja California.

We dedicate this study to Lawrence Kohlberg and Robert A. LeVine, who inspired and supported our work in this area. We also want to thank Sara Harkness and Charles Super for helping us to understand the problems of measuring stage cross‐culturally. We thank the following colleagues for their extensive help in conducting the studies: Blanca Estela Miranda‐Romero, Isidra Guadalupe Hernández‐Morelos. We also want to thank Fernando Cerón‐Esquivel, Thomas G. Gutheil, and Mark J. Hauser, who helped prepare grant applications and papers and who helped with institutional arrangements.

Portions of the study appeared in the BA theses of Blanca Estela Miranda‐Romero and Isidra Guadalupe Hernández‐Morelos at the Facultad de Ciencias Humanas, Universidad Autónoma en Baja California. Guadalupe Hernández‐Morelos translated the subjects' interviews reported in this paper.

Partial results were presented as follows:

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