Examining the Moral Foundations of High School Students

Abstract

This research was carried out as Study-1 and Study-2. In both studies, it was aimed to examine the factors that form the foundations of high school students' moral perception. In Study-1, data were collected with the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. In Study-1, high school students saw the concepts of Harm/Care, Fairness, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity related to morality and formed their judgments on social life basing on these foundations. In addition, it was observed that women got significantly higher scores than men in harm/care and fairness sub-factors. In Study-2, the moral perceptions of high school students were examined with open-ended questionnaire questions. According to the analysis of the results of the answers to open-ended questions, high school students highlighted the fields of social morality and sexual morality. Apart from these two areas, they also touched upon the areas of violent morality and individual morality. Thus, four areas of morality were identified in Study-2. In addition, it was observed that women in social morality and men in violent morality came to the fore negatively. In sexual morality, moral problems of women came to the fore in some codes and moral problems of men came to the fore in some codes. As a general result, it was seen in both studies that the foundations of high school students' moral perceptions were built on similar moral foundations.