JOURNAL OF BLACK PSYCHOLOGY / FEBRUARY 2000 Humphries et al. / MORAL REASONING Predictors of Moral Reasoning Among African American Children: A Preliminary Study

This study examined the ways in which gender, empathy, and cultural orientation (communalism and competitive individualism) influence the moral judgments of urban fifth and eighth grade African American children. Pencil and paper meas-ures of these constructs were completed by 44 fifth and 46 eighth graders. Results revealed greater endorsement of communalism among girls than boys. Separate correlation matrices and path analysis models were computed for girls and boys. Communalism, empathy, and grade emerged as significant correlates and predic-tors of moral reasoning among boys. Empathy emerged as a mediator between communalism and moral reasoning for boys. Grade was the only significant cor-relate and predictor of moral reasoning for girls. The findings are discussed in terms of the study’s methodological limitations and implications for future re-search on African American culture and moral development. Morality connotes one’s sense of right and wrong. It implies thoughts, feelings, and actions of the self and others, which are relevant to both trans-gression and beneficence. Such issues have long been of interest to develop-mental psychologists (Turiel, 1998), and a scan of the contemporar