The impact of socio-demographic attributes on moral judgment of Japanese population

Based on the dual process theory in moral judgment

Abstract

Several factors influence people’s ability to make moral judgments. Apart from manipulating experimental conditions, this association can be explored in terms of socio-demographic attributes such as the social status and background of individuals. This study aimed to investigate the impact of marital status, parental status, income level, and the type of work on people's tendency to make moral judgments. This study recruited participants from across Japan, who completed 60 moral dilemma tasks, personal moral dilemmas (22 questions), impersonal moral dilemmas (19 questions), and non-moral dilemmas (19 questions) used in Greene et al. (2001). This study found that marital status, parenthood, annual personal income, and work status only influenced moral judgments during personal moral dilemmas. However, this difference was not observed for impersonal moral dilemmas and non-moral dilemmas. This study suggests that individual socio-demographic attributes affect moral judgments during personal dilemmas since people experiencing them are strongly influenced by emotions. This result also supports the applicability of the dual-process model in Japanese culture.