The Good, the Bad, and the Not-so-ugly

A Qualitative, Exploratory study of Morality in Religious Leaders and Convicted Criminals

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to explore and compare, using qualitative and quantitative methods,  moral judgment and moral reasoning in religious leaders and convicted criminals. Two men and two women in each group were identified using non probability sampling. Each respondent participated in a semi structured interview and reverted to moral dilemmas as elucidated in the Defining Issues Test. The DIT revealed each respondent’s preferred moral schema amongst Personal-Interest, Maintaining Norms & Post Conventional; whereas the narratives revealed other schemes and reasoning principles used in making moral judgments. The quantitative and qualitative analysis for between gender and between group differences revealed that the two groups differed significantly on the DIT score of P- score with religious leaders scoring higher than convicted criminals, but did not display striking differences in the themes generated from narratives. The narratives also revealed the need to propose new schemas of moral reasoning like ‘God/ religion as the basis of universal ethical principles’ and ‘post conventional moral thought as subservient to divinity’. The female respondents differed from the male respondents in the nature of moral reasoning rather than stages of moral development. Other significant themes have been discussed with DIT scores as supplementary data for an exhaustive understanding of morality in the two groups. Limitations and future directions for research are also noted.