Care-oriented moral reasoning and prosocial behavior: A question of gender or sex role orientation

Abstract

The possibility that sex role orientation was a better predictor of care-oriented moral development than gender for both men and women was investigated in this study. Also, the relationship between care-oriented moral reasoning and prosocial behavior was examined. Subjects were university students with the majority being Caucasian (97%) and single (86%). Using pre-selected groups of sex role stereotyped and androgynous individuals (45 females, 45 males), the relationship between sex role orientation and care-oriented moral reasoning was found to be stronger than that between gender and moral reasoning. However, this finding was accounted for largely by differences among women. Although moral reasoning did not relate to prosocial behavior as expected, there were significant gender differences in prosocial behavior. Two implications are that the Ethic of Care Interview may need to be re-designed to be more applicable for men and that sex role subscription may be a more important psychological variable than gender.