Gender identity and racial identity on moral reasoning

Abstract

This study examined how gender identity and racial identity of victims in an event influence moral character and moral reasoning orientations of observers. Hypotheses of this study were: (1) observers would help female victims more than male victims; (2) observers would use care-oriented and justice-oriented moral reasoning in helping female victims; (3) observers helped victims in congruent racial identity more than people with another racial identity; (4) observers would use care-oriented moral reasoning in helping victims with congruent racial identity. A virtual scenario was designed in three between-subject experiments to test these four hypotheses. In total, 96 Hong Kong young adults participated this study. In the virtual scenario, victims portrayed as a male vs a female or a Chinese vs a Pilipino were asked with both care-oriented and justice-oriented questions in a moral dilemma. The gender and the racial of the victim in this scenario were programmed with a software that creates face variation of color and hair styles based on an identical face configuration. The study showed that the gender identity did play a role in moral reasoning. It is statistically significant that observer participants would choose to help female victims. However, the racial identity of the victims did not show an effect on the preference of the moral decision of the observers. In addition, male observers were readier to provide careoriented help to victims in the virtual scenarios.