An examination of the relationships between moral reasoning ability and personality type preference in pre-service teachers utilizing the DIT and the MBTI.

摘要

The landscape of American society is rapidly changing. One area of concern for many is the seeming lack of morality in today's culture. As morals and values become a concern, the focus often turns towards the school system and teachers. Since teachers play an important role in the socialization and training process of children, it is important to understand the morals and values of the teachers themselves.;The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between pre-service teachers' personality type preference and their level of moral judgment. James Rest's Four-component model of moral action and Jung's theory of personality, opperationalized by the Defining Issues Test (DIT) and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) respectively, were used as the as the framework. The data indicated that there were significant differences in moral judgment ability between groups of individuals with differing personality type preferences.;Specifically those who preferred Intuition (N) as their means to perceive information had a higher mean p-index than those who preferred Sensation (S), F (1,124) = 10.79, p = .001. Additionally, when looking at the Sensation-Intuition (S-N) and the Thinking-Feeling (T-F) simultaneously, the main effect for both the S-N and T-F sub-scales were significant, F(1,124) = 21.903, p = .000, and F(1,124) = 4.397, p = .038, respectively. There was a significant interaction between the S-N and T-F factor, F(1,124) = 9.493, p = .003. Indicating that post-conventional thinking differs depending upon how individuals both perceive and judge information.;Differences were also detected when examining schema profiles. When examining the four MBTI sub-scales independently, differences emerged in the S-N sub-scale and the T-F sub-scale. The Intuition (N) group utilized the maintain norms schema less and the post-conventional schema more than their Sensing (S) counterparts, F(1,124) = 9.68, p = .002 and F(1,124) = 10.79, p = .001 respectively. The Feeling (F) group utilized the personal interest schema more than their Thinking (F) counterparts, F(1,124) = 7.63, p = .007. When looking at the Sensation-Intuition (S-N) and the Thinking-Feeling (T-F) simultaneously, significant differences emerged in all three moral schema. This preliminary research has indicated that personality type preferences may play a key role in moral development.