Week 11 Post 2

The section of measuring moral growth in Chapter 18 was interesting.  The Defining Issues Test (DIT) was developed by James Rest and is a way to measure moral thinking.  DIT is a series of questions and is designed to assess the person's level of moral development.  Each question poses a dilemma and the respondent will ranks their priorities in order to answer the question.  This ranking will lead to a number score that correlates with cognition and moral development.  DIT scores are positively correlated with the rise in age.  This makes sense because with all types of cognitive development, we fully develop at a later age, if at all.  In moral development, adults become less self-serving and more altruistic.  As children and adolescents, we do not have great moral development and are in the first few stages of Kohlberg's stages of moral development.  As we grow old, we have more experience and must face more difficult decision therefore it makes sense that adults would have a higher DIT score than an adolescent who has not developed and has not had as many experiences as adults have.