Psychological Development and Education ›› 2009, Vol. 25 ›› Issue (3): 39-45.

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Study on real-life moral dilemmas among university students:Everyday morality perspective

LI Yin1, XU Wen-yan2   

  1. 1. Department of Education and Human Development, Peking University, Beijing 100871;
    2. Department of Social Work, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433
  • Online:2009-07-15 Published:2009-07-15

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Abstract: Taking everyday morality perspective, the present study dedicates itself to investigate the real-life moral dilemmas university students personally have experienced in their everyday lives.45 undergraduate students and postgraduate students participated in this study.The foci in this study were on what issues people perceived their real-life moral dilemmas as involving as well as how they resolved the conflicts inherent in these issues.The findings indicated that(1)most of real-life moral dilemmas were different from the hypothetical dilemmas involving conflicts between moral norms.Moral content lied mainly in the issues people addressed.Individuals differed in both how many issues and what issues they read into or saw in different types of real-life moral dilemmas.(2)the appropriate strategies people advocated for handling moral problems wore somewhat different from those they applied in their real-life moral dilemmas.In particular, there wore more self-serving and pragmatic concerns in real-life moral decision.In addition, people relied on consideration of consequences especially harm when evaluating moral actions.

Key words: real-life moral dilemma, everyday morality, moral domain, moral function

CLC Number: 

  • B844.2
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