Adolescent Naturalistic Conceptions of Moral Maturity

Understanding lay conceptions of morality is important not only because they can guide moral psychology theory but also because they may play a role in everyday moral functioning. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine adolescent conceptions of moral maturity. Study 1 (200 adolescents 12-18 years) involved a free-listing procedure to generate traits descriptive of a moral person. In Study 2, involving 100 early (11-14 years) and 99 late (15-18 years) adolescents, the moral person traits obtained in the first study were rated in terms of how well they described a moral person. Study 3, with 234 early (10-14 years) and 240 late (15-18 years) adolescents, entailed a similarity-sorting task and a rating procedure similar to that from Study 2. This set of studies uncovered early and late adolescents' implicit typologies of moral maturity and pointed to possible age similarities and differences.