Abstract

The purposes of this study were 1) to examine the development of children's and adolescents' reasoning about sociomoral dilemmas, and 2) to determine the relation between honesty and kindness of sociomoral judgment to story solution. 2 dilemma stories for assessing development of understanding relations between honesty and kindness were administered to 300 children and 231 adolescents. The data were analyzed through content analysis, and chi-squares were applied to examine grades- and gender differences. The results showed significant grades- and gender differences in sociomoral judgment. Children's reasoning tented to be stereotyped, approval and interpersonally oriented. Stereotyped judgments of interpersonally ar approval-oriented reasoning(honesty) deceased in frequency with age, whereas judgments reflecting internalized values (social lie as kindness) increased in use with age. Since this study was explanatory in nature, implications of the results and further research were discussed and suggested.