The credibility of justice and care arguments in an instructional context
Main Article Content
Lawrence Kohlberg described the moral judgment process as reasoning about justice and fairness (Kohlberg, 1969). His model of moral reasoning, according to Gilligan (1982), failed to address issues of morality that concerned the balancing of care for self and care for others. She argued that moral reasoning could be based on two cognitive frameworks. One involved reasoning about moral issues of care, while the other dealt with reasoning about justice. Each has its own logic, its own psychic legitimacy and methods for resolving moral conflicts and making choices. The justice perspective defines moral issues in terms of competing rights of autonomous persons. The care perspective defines moral issues as conflicting obligations toward self and others. Research provides sufficient evidence that justice and care orientations can be differentiated in responses to moral dilemmas (Gilligan & Attanucci, 1988; Jaffee & Hyde, 2000; Walker, de Vries, & Trevethan, 1987). However, it is not clear whether these two cognitive frameworks are differentiated within instructional contexts. Two responses are assessed: the first involves the credibility of the speaker and the second involves the credibility of the message. We asked if subjects respond to the speaker or the message differently depending on whether arguments were predominately based on justice or care reasoning. Next we ask whether subjects respond differently depending on the position (advocacy or opposition) of arguments. Carpendale and Krebs (1995) found that responses to real-life moral dilemmas were partly a function of whether students argued for or against a position, while Brown and Newman (1982) report that teachers and administrators rated an advocate’s argument as more technical and readable than that of an adversary. However, Lind (1995) has argued that the ability to appreciate moral principles independently of whether or not one agrees with the position is an important component of moral competence. We predicted that credibility ratings of a speaker and the message would differ in the justice and care conditions and the pro and con conditions. Care arguments may be more credible when advocating a person’s rights while justice arguments may be more credible while opposing a person’s position on an issue. The following propositions are tested in this study:
(1) Ratings of speaker credibility are higher in the care than in the justice condition.
(2) Ratings of speaker credibility are higher in the pro than in the con condition.
(3) Ratings of speaker credibility in the care and justice conditions are moderated by whether arguments advocate or oppose the reproductive rights of women.
(4) Ratings of the credibility of the message are higher in the care than in the justice condition.
(5) Ratings of the credibility of the message are higher in the pro than in the con condition.
(6) Ratings of the credibility of the message in the care and justice conditions are moderated by whether arguments advocate or oppose the reproductive rights of women.
Method
Participants
One hundred and ninety-seven students were recruited from 7 intact classes at a university located in northeastern United States. Most were females (n = 153) who were majoring in education (n = 179). Their ages ranged from 20 years to 62 years old with a mean age of 29.5 years and a standard deviation of 8.3 years.
Instruments
Speaker Credibility
The Teacher Rating Form was used to assess perceptions of expertness, trustworthiness, and attractiveness (Corrigan & Schmidt, 1983). The instrument included 12 bipolar items reflecting speaker credibility (e.g. skillful – unskillful, expert – inexpert, sincere – insincere, trustworthy – untrustworthy, likable – unlikable, sociable – unsociable). The reliability and validity of this measure have been well documented for use in assessing the credibility of a speaker (Corrigan & Schmidt, 1983; Epperson & Pecnik, 1985). The internal consistency coefficient was adequate for group comparisons (α = .86).
Message Credibility
We assessed the credibility of the message with two scales (Andersen, 1979; Kearney & McCroskey, 1980). The first asked subjects to rate instruction with 6 bipolar adjectives, for example, poor – excellent; valuable – worthless; important – unimportant. The second asked them to indicate willingness to 1) practice the teacher’s suggestions; 2) take another class from the teacher if a schedule permitted; and 3) recommend the course to peers. Students were asked to rate each of these items with 4 semantic differential scales: unlikely/likely, improbable/probable, impossible/possible, would not/would. The two scales were combined for an index of the credibility of the message (α = .95).
Procedures
Four analogues presented justice or care as frameworks for explaining either pro or con arguments on the reproductive rights of women. Experimental conditions included: (1) Justice – Opposition; (2) Justice – Advocacy; (3) Care – Opposition; (4) Care – Advocacy. A professional actor played a teacher in the four conditions. In each of these analogues, he wore the same clothes and used scripts that controlled for the number and type of nonverbal behaviors.
Subjects viewed one of the instructional analogues. In each analogue the speaker summarized views of a scholar and his position on the reproductive rights of women. In the justice conditions, the arguments emphasized rights and standards of fairness. In the care conditions, the arguments emphasized the need to protect the woman or fetus from harm and the need to lessen hurt or suffering. Next, he presented quotations from authors who emphasized either justice or care reasons to support their view. The speaker used reasons based on justice or care to explain his position on the issue. Simulations lasted approximately 12 minutes and ended with a classroom discussion of the issue (for full text of teaching simulations see Lim, 1998). After viewing an analogue, subjects were asked to rate the credibility of the speaker and the message.
In order to establish the validity of the analogues, we asked a random sample of subjects (N = 20) to rate the frequency of nonverbal cues (eye contacts, tense body positions, gestures, movements, direct body position toward students, smiling) in the four experimental conditions (without sound). Next they listened to each tape without watching it and rated the frequency of verbal cues for justice and care reasoning. The frequencies of nonverbal cues were not significantly different, F(3,57) = 2.16, p > .05. The justice conditions had twice as many justice verbal cues as care verbal cues, F(1, 19) = 57.94, p < .01, and the care conditions had twice as many care verbal cues as justice verbal cues, F(1, 19) = 69.54, p < .01. Verbal cues did not differ in the pro or con conditions: F(1, 19) = 3.95, p > .05 (justice verbal cues); F(1, 19) = .91, p > .05 (care verbal cues).
Results
The gender and major of subjects differed across the four experimental conditions: χ2 (3, N = 197) = 12.01, p < .01 for gender and χ2 (3, N = 197) = 25.24, p < .01 for major. Age of subjects also differed across conditions, F(3, 193) = 6.27, p < .01, but attitudes toward abortion did not, F(3, 193) = 1.09, p > .05, ns. Regression analyses indicate that age was positively related to ratings of speaker credibility, F(1,195) = 12.65, p < .01. Older subjects rated the speaker as more credible than did younger subjects. We controlled for age in later analyses.
Table 1. Means and Standard Deviations of Ratings of the Credibility of the Speaker and the Message for Ratings in Each Analogue
Note: a. Arguments were presented which opposed a woman’s reproductive rights.
b. Arguments were presented which advocated a woman’s reproductive rights.
Using age as a covariate, an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) examined the effects of moral orientation and position (advocacy or opposition) on the ratings of speaker and message credibility. Next we examined the effects of moral orientation and position on ratings of the credibility of the message. Table 1 shows ratings of the dependent measures in each of the four experimental conditions.
Speaker Credibility
No significant differences in ratings of speaker credibility were found between the justice and care conditions, F(1, 188) = .39, p > .05, η2 = .002. However, differences in speaker credibility were found between the pro and con conditions, F(1, 188) = 4.09, p < .05, η2 = .021). Subjects rated the speaker as more credible when opposing than when advocating the reproductive rights of women. No significant interactions were found between moral orientations or positions on ratings of speaker credibility, F(1, 188) = 1.01, p > .05, η2 = .005).
Ratings of the Credibility of the Message
Ratings of message credibility differed between the justice and care conditions, F(1, 188) = 7.92, p < .01, η2 =.040. Students rated the instruction as more credible in the care than in the justice condition. Ratings did not differ in the pro or con conditions, F(1, 188) = .34, p > .05, η2 = .002. A significant interaction effect was found between moral orientation and position on ratings of the credibility of the message, F(1, 188) = 8.74, p < .01, η2 = .044). Ratings of the credibility of the message were higher when a care – rather than a justice – argument advocated the reproductive rights of women. When the speaker explained arguments that opposed the reproductive rights of women, ratings of instructional credibility did not differ between the justice and care conditions (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Rating of the message when Care or Justice Reasoning was used to advocate or Oppose the reproductive rights of women
Discussion
This study compared the credibility of justice and care arguments when explaining pro and con positions about the reproductive rights of women. When rating the credibility of the message, subjects rated care arguments that advocated the reproductive rights of women as more credible than justice arguments that advocated them. However, their ratings of care and justice arguments did not differ when these arguments opposed the reproductive rights of women. Subjects’ ratings of pro and con arguments did not differ. However, when they rated the credibility of the speaker, he was rated as more credible when presenting arguments opposing rather than advocating the reproductive rights of women, while they did not rate him differently depending on whether arguments were based on care or justice reasoning.
It is interesting to speculate about the possible reasons for these findings. One might argue that the gender of the teacher influenced the students’ ratings of teacher expertness, trustworthiness, and attractiveness. In all four teaching analogues, the male teacher was rated as more expert than attractive. Positive ratings of attractiveness reflect a perception that the teacher is likeable and has similar attitudes to those of the students. Since most students were women, while the speaker was a male who was discussing the reproductive rights of women, they may not have perceived him as having a very good grasp of women’s feelings and views. Typically, a communicator’s attractiveness and influence increase with communicator-audience similarity (Byrne, 1971; Stoneman & Brody, 1981). This may also explain why ratings of the speaker were higher when he presented arguments that opposed rather than advocated the reproductive rights of women.
The finding that the credibility of the message was rated more positively for care than for justice arguments may reflect the discrepancy between males and females in the sample. Second, it could be argued that teaching about the reproductive rights of women makes more sense when it is framed as an issue involving relationships and obligations than when it is framed as involving the rights of persons within a set of conventional rules, laws or prescriptions for behavior. (Boyd, 1989; Lyons, 1989).
Would the subjects rate a female speaker as more credible when discussing the reproductive rights of women? Would a sample of men respond differently to justice and care reasoning in an instructional context? Would subjects respond to justice and care reasoning in instruction differently depending on the issue that was discussed? Although our purpose was to investigate whether justice and care reasoning can be differentiated in an instructional analogue, one could ask whether they are differentiated by students in actual classrooms.
References
Andersen, J. (1979). The relationship between teacher immediacy and teaching effectiveness. In D. Nimmo (Ed.), Communication yearbook 3 (pp. 543-559). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
Boyd, D. (1989). The character of moral development. In L. P. Nucci (Ed.), Moral development and character education: A dialogue (pp. 95-123). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corporation.
Brown, R. D., & Newman, D. L. (1982). An investigation of the effect of different data presentation formats and order of arguments in a simulated adversary evaluation. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 4(2), 197-203.
Byrne, D. (1971). The attraction paradigm. New York: Academic Press.
Carpendale, J. I., & Krebs, D. L. (1995). Variations in moral judgment as a function of type of dilemma and moral choice. Journal of Personality, 63(2), 289-313.
Corrigan, J. D., & Schmidt, L. D. (1983). Development and validation of revisions in the counselor rating form. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 30(1), 64-75.
Epperson, D. L., & Pecnik, J. A. (1985). Counselor Rating Form – Short Version: Further validation and comparison to the long form. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 32(1), 143-146.
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gilligan, C., & Attanucci, J. (1988). Two moral orientations: Gender differences and similarities, Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 34(3), 223-237.
Jaffee, S., & Hyde, J. S. (2000). Gender differences in moral orientation: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 126(5), 703-726.
Kearney, P., & McCroskey, J. C. (1980). Relationships among teacher communication style: Trait and state communication apprehension and teacher effectiveness. In D. Nimmo (Ed.), Communication yearbook 4 (pp. 533-551). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
Kohlberg, L. (1969). Stage and sequence: The cognitive developmental approach to socialization. In D. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization theory and research. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Lim, S. (1998). Justice and care approaches to teaching about moral tolerance. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University at Albany, Albany, NY.
Lind, G. (1995, April). The meaning and measurement of moral competence revisited. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco.
Lyons, N. P. (1989). Seeing and resolving moral conflict: Students’ approaches to learning and making choices. In L. P. Nucci (Ed.), Moral development and character education: A dialogue (pp. 145-160). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corporation.
Stoneman, Z., & Brody, G. H. (1981). Peer as mediators of television food advertisements aimed at children. Developmental Psychology, 17, 853-858.
Walker, L., deVries, B., & Trevethan, S. (1987). Moral stages and moral orientation in real-life and hypothetical dilemmas. Child Development, 58, 842-858.
Andersen, J. (1979). The relationship between teacher immediacy and teaching effectiveness. In D. Nimmo (Ed.), Communication yearbook 3 (pp. 543-559). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
Boyd, D. (1989). The character of moral development. In L. P. Nucci (Ed.), Moral development and character education: A dialogue (pp. 95-123). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corporation.
Brown, R. D., & Newman, D. L. (1982). An investigation of the effect of different data presentation formats and order of arguments in a simulated adversary evaluation. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 4(2), 197-203.
Byrne, D. (1971). The attraction paradigm. New York: Academic Press.
Carpendale, J. I., & Krebs, D. L. (1995). Variations in moral judgment as a function of type of dilemma and moral choice. Journal of Personality, 63(2), 289-313.
Corrigan, J. D., & Schmidt, L. D. (1983). Development and validation of revisions in the counselor rating form. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 30(1), 64-75.
Epperson, D. L., & Pecnik, J. A. (1985). Counselor Rating Form – Short Version: Further validation and comparison to the long form. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 32(1), 143-146.
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gilligan, C., & Attanucci, J. (1988). Two moral orientations: Gender differences and similarities, Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 34(3), 223-237.
Jaffee, S., & Hyde, J. S. (2000). Gender differences in moral orientation: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 126(5), 703-726.
Kearney, P., & McCroskey, J. C. (1980). Relationships among teacher communication style: Trait and state communication apprehension and teacher effectiveness. In D. Nimmo (Ed.), Communication yearbook 4 (pp. 533-551). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
Kohlberg, L. (1969). Stage and sequence: The cognitive developmental approach to socialization. In D. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization theory and research. Chicago: Rand McNally.
Lim, S. (1998). Justice and care approaches to teaching about moral tolerance. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University at Albany, Albany, NY.
Lind, G. (1995, April). The meaning and measurement of moral competence revisited. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco.
Lyons, N. P. (1989). Seeing and resolving moral conflict: Students’ approaches to learning and making choices. In L. P. Nucci (Ed.), Moral development and character education: A dialogue (pp. 145-160). Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing Corporation.
Stoneman, Z., & Brody, G. H. (1981). Peer as mediators of television food advertisements aimed at children. Developmental Psychology, 17, 853-858.
Walker, L., deVries, B., & Trevethan, S. (1987). Moral stages and moral orientation in real-life and hypothetical dilemmas. Child Development, 58, 842-858.
Table 1. Means and Standard Deviations of Ratings of the Credibility of the Speaker and the Message for Ratings in Each Analogue
Note: a. Arguments were presented which opposed a woman’s reproductive rights.
b. Arguments were presented which advocated a woman’s reproductive rights.
Figure 1. Rating of the message when Care or Justice Reasoning was used to advocate or Oppose the reproductive rights of women
Appreciation is due to reviewers including
Ming Singer
PhD
Department of Psychology
University of Canterbury
Christchurch
New Zealand. Email