Gender Differences in Moral Development and Moral Reasoning

Abstract

Based on Kohlberg's stage theory, this paper reviews the gender and age differences of individuals in moral choice and moral reasoning. Most experimental study did not show significant differences in moral choices at the Kohlberg stage. However, more women have a moral preference for care in moral reasoning. Moreover, women show different moral reasoning for different contexts and give more reactions, which is more flexible and complex. Moreover, older participants placed more emphasis on the morality of justice while younger participants placed more emphasis on the morality of care. Moral reasoning reasoning can become comprehensive and complex with grade level. This paper systematically sorts out the moral differences between men and women by reviewing and summarizing previous empirical research, in order to provide some references for subsequent research. However, previous empirical studies have mostly been based on middle-class samples, so hopefully there will be experiments on a wider sample in the future.