Moraliteit, taal en geslacht - De verschillen in moreel redeneren door mannelijke en vrouwelijke adolescenten in het Nederlands en in het Engels

Abstract

What would you do? Push one man of a bridge in order to save five others? Or would you do nothing? There are many aspects that could influence your decision, like language in which the dilemma is presented, gender and emotionality of the dilemma. In our current research we examined the influence of gender and language on moral decision making in adolescents. By moral decision making we mean the extent to which you choose an utilitarian or a deterministically answer. Do you choose for the most survivors or do you refuse to deliberately kill another person? From our participants, 127 fourth year high school students, the first half got three Dutch dilemmas and the other half got three English dilemmas. It turns out that the language in which the dilemmas are presented, doesn’t make any difference in the answers. Gender, on the other hand, did show an effect. In one of the three dilemmas we used, boys scored significantly more utilitarian than girls. This shows that not only gender, but also the kind of dilemma has effect on the results.