The Relevance of Spirituality and Reasoned Action for Adolescent Moral and Immoral Behavioral Intentions.

摘要

The theory of reasoned action is found to be predictive of behavioral intentions (BI) in ethical situations, particularly when a moral component is included as a predictor (R. L. Gorsuch & J. Ortberg, 1983). However, researchers have not explored the potential influence of spirituality on moral and immoral BI through attitudes, moral evaluations, and social norms from a reasoned action perspective. In the current study, 495 high-school aged adolescents attending a Christian summer camp completed an assessment of their intentions to engage in various behaviors that are perceived as either "moral" or "immoral," along with their attitudes, moral evaluations, and social norms towards those behaviors. The campers also completed measures of God concept and religious motivation, as additional predictors of BI and spiritual well-being. The results reveal that the set of spirituality variables is significantly associated with both Moral BI and Immoral BI, along with the Attitudes, Moral Evaluations, and Social Norms toward these sets of behaviors. In fact, the set of spirituality variables contribute uniquely to the prediction of Moral and Immoral BI, reflecting the strength of the relationship between spirituality and behavioral intentions. Additionally, this unique effect, along with a significant relationship with spiritual well-being, supports the multivariate theory of spirituality. Surprisingly, Attitudes (i.e., experiential/affective evaluations) are the strongest predictors of the behavioral intentions and are highly correlated with spirituality. The results confirm that spirituality is an important facet to consider with behaviors that are associated with morality.;Keywords: reasoned action, morality, religion, spirituality, religious camp