Stephens Jason M
Faculty of Education and Social Work, School of Learning Development and Professional Practice, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
Front Psychol. 2018 Mar 1;9:246. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00246. eCollection 2018.
There is often a divide between moral judgment and moral action; between what we believe we ought to do (or not do) and what we do. Knowledge of this divide is not new, and numerous theories have attempted to offer more robust accounts of ethical decision-making and moral functioning. Knowledge of widespread academic dishonesty among students is also not new, and several studies have revealed that many students report cheating despite believing it is wrong. The present study, involving cross-sectional survey data from a sample of secondary students ( = 380) in the United States, contributes to the literature on this important area of theory and research by fulfilling three broad purposes. The first purpose concerned the assessment of students' judgments related to academic dishonesty, and offered evidence for the utility of a new instrument that measures what domain (personal, conventional, or moral) students use to categorize various types of cheating behavior rather than how much they believe it to be wrong. The second purpose involved exploring the relations between domain judgments and engagement in academic dishonesty, and results provided evidence for the hypothesis that students who believed an action to be morally wrong would be less likely to report doing it. Finally, the third and most important purpose of the study involved bridging the divide between moral judgment and action of academic dishonesty by testing competing theoretical models of moral functioning. Results indicated that the data demonstrated the best fit to a modified version of the hypothesized four-component model, whereby self-regulation (in the form of selective moral disengagement) played a significant mediating role in the relations between moral judgment and academic dishonesty, and that moral judgment also affected self-regulation indirectly through moral motivation (i.e., responsibility judgments). In brief, findings from this study offer support for the contention that moral functioning is both multi-component and effortful. Moral judgment is important, but only one of several components needed for effective moral functioning, and motivation and self-regulation play critical mediating roles in helping to bridge the divide between judgment and action.
道德判断与道德行为之间往往存在分歧；在我们认为自己应该做（或不应该做）的事情与我们实际所做的事情之间存在分歧。对这种分歧的认识并不新鲜，众多理论都试图更全面地阐释伦理决策和道德功能。学生中普遍存在学术不诚实行为这一情况也并非新鲜事，多项研究表明，许多学生尽管认为作弊是错误的，但仍报告有过作弊行为。本研究采用来自美国380名中学生样本的横断面调查数据，通过实现三个主要目标，为这一重要理论与研究领域的文献作出了贡献。第一个目标涉及评估学生对学术不诚实行为的判断，并为一种新工具的效用提供证据，该工具衡量学生用于对各类作弊行为进行分类的领域（个人、常规或道德），而非他们认为作弊错误的程度。第二个目标是探究领域判断与学术不诚实行为参与度之间的关系，结果为以下假设提供了证据：认为某一行为在道德上错误的学生报告实施该行为的可能性较小。最后，该研究的第三个也是最重要的目标是通过检验道德功能的竞争性理论模型，弥合学术不诚实行为的道德判断与行为之间的分歧。结果表明，数据最符合假设的四成分模型的一个修改版本，即自我调节（以选择性道德脱离的形式）在道德判断与学术不诚实行为之间的关系中发挥了重要的中介作用，并且道德判断也通过道德动机（即责任判断）间接影响自我调节。简而言之，本研究结果支持了以下观点：道德功能既是多成分的，也是需要付出努力的。道德判断很重要，但只是有效道德功能所需的几个成分之一，动机和自我调节在帮助弥合判断与行为之间的分歧方面发挥着关键的中介作用。
