Adolescents’ moral reasoning when honesty and loyalty collide

Abstract

AbstractAccording to moral pluralism theory, people practice moral reasoning based on several fundamental dimensions, including honesty and loyalty. As individuals navigate increasingly complex social worlds over development, they may face the dilemmas where honesty collides with loyalty. In the current study, adolescents (15‐ to 18‐year‐olds, N = 203) in a western, multicultural Canadian city read moral dilemmas involving a protagonist learning that an athlete cheated in a sports event. We manipulated the relationship between the protagonist and the cheater (best friends or compatriots) between subjects and the protagonist's responses (telling a loyal lie or the disloyal truth) within subjects. We examined participants’ first‐person behavioral intentions (choices) in the hypothetical dilemmas and third‐party judgments of protagonists’ morality. These adolescents projected that they personally would be more inclined to tell a loyal lie for a friend than their country, but older adolescents were more likely to lie for their country than younger ones. Participants judged telling disloyal truths to expose a friend significantly less favorably than disloyal truths to expose a country. These adolescents reflected upon loyalty and caring, honesty and fairness, and nonmoral practical factors when justifying their choices and judgments. The current study advances our understanding of moral development by revealing that with sophisticated social‐cognitive capacities, adolescents can coordinate different fundamental moral values when rendering their moral reasoning.