Exploring pro-social moral reasoning of Sri Lankan school children using Eisenbergian dilemmas

Abstract

Prosocial moral reasoning is an area that is supported through past research as having gender, age, and cultural variations. However, so far it had not been measured in the Sri Lankan context. The present study explored the age and gender differences in prosocial moral reasoning of Sri Lankan children using Eisenbergian dilemmas. The participants of this study were 86 school children representing grades five, eight, and eleven, who answered four culturally adapted stories from Eisenberg’s original study. A comparison was made between the findings of the present study and the original study of Eisenberg. Through the analysis it was found that there was a cultural difference in the development of prosocial reasoning since the majority of the sample was in level 3-approval seeking and stereotyped orientation. Similar to the original study, participants showed a gradual increase in their level of morality with age but in fewer numbers. All these differences highlight the need to develop a separate theoretical model for non-western cultural settings for prosocial behaviour.