Moral Developmental Consistency: Investigating the Role of Academic Major

A variety of studies have shown education majors to score significantly lower on assessments ofmora I reasoning and moral judgment. Previous studies have compared education majors with composite samples using a relatively imprecise measure of moral judgment (the DIT P-score); these studies have addressed only one aspect ofmoral development, moral reasoning, and also fail to distingnish between micromorality and macromorality. Because of these shortcomings in previous research, this study questions the degree to which differences exist among college majors. This study considers scores on the Defining Issues Test-2 (DIT-2), Attitudes Towards Human Rights Inventory (ATHRI), Racial and Ethical Sensitivity Test Compact Disk, and Universal Orientation Scale among samples of 53 education majors, 39 psychology majors, and 64 other majors. This study did not show education majors to score significantly lower than the psychology or other majors in the area ofmoral judgment as measured by DIT-2 N2 scores, although education majors did score significantly lower than the psychology and other majors on the ATHRI. Regression analyses revealed differences among groups in the way the DIT-2 scores relate to the ATHRI. The findings of this study suggest that the differences between education and other majors are not as strong as previous studies have portrayed. However, these findings do suggest that there may be differences in how moral judgment is developed and used