Relationship between Moral Judgment Development and Political Attitude

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to examine the

emotional/political reactions to the terrorist attacks of

September 11, 2001 in the USA and to look at the

relationship among moral judgment development, attitude

toward to human right and political reactions to terrorist

attacks. The current study's results demonstrated that

with respect to emotional responses to terrorist attacks,

'angry' and 'sad' appear at the same frequency while the

least emotional response is 'confused'. Females report

sadness more than males while males report anger more

than females in a certain situation. With respect to

political action choices to terrorist attack, males tend to

consider a retaliatory response when they make political

decision while females tend to consider more considerable

ways in which we can overcome terrorist situation.

Students who get higher moral judgment scores are less

likely to insist that "we must fight back" while students

who get lower moral judgment scores are less likely to

insist that "we should not make hasty decisions." However

it is not a significant difference, so we need to have more

data and should explore in detail this relationship.

In addition, people who have higher scores on attitude on human rights are more likely to consider innocent

people's lives when they make political decisions. People

who are more considering human rights tend to disagree

with action choice 3 "we must fight back." Because the

survey was administered to dentistry students in January

2002, their emotional responses and their political action

choices could be different from what they thought right

after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. Finally

generalizability issue of the current study is discussed.