Moral Competence and Moral Judgment Measures in Association with Indices of Impartiality in the Self-Reported Moral Attitude

Theoretical reflection generally favors the idea that a higher level in moral thinking and behavior would be characterized by impartiality as long as they are based on moral principles, which should not be applied differently to different people. Despite its spread, this theoretical idea has been empirically investigated to a rather limited extent, especially regarding the degree to which popular psychological measures of the moral judgment and competence are indeed positively associated with impartial attitudes in various particular situations with moral valence. In the current research, in a series of three studies, the relationship of two such psychological measures (Moral Competence Test: MCT and Socio-moral Reflection Questionnaire-Short Form: SRM-SFO) with several indices for impartial benevolence was investigated. The results of the three studies indicate that SRM-SFO instrument may reflect better than the MCT instrument the impartial benevolence aspect of moral thinking in both of its investigated types (the situation that requires breaking a moral law and the one requiring the observance of a moral law). Of all the investigated impartiality indices, the impartiality score for saving someone else’s life computed based on the SRM-SFO items was the most closely linked to the moral judgment status assessed both with SRM-SFO and with MCT. The preference for the SRM-SFO postconventional moral arguments of level 4 (the highest one) was the index that was the most positively related with all the investigated indices for the impartial benevolence. Future studies on larger and more heterogeneous samples and with better measures for impartiality are needed to see to what extent the obtained results can be replicated.