Adolescent moral judgment and perceptions of family interaction.

Oakland Growth Study (Jones, 1939) subjects and 98 adolescent offspring, ages 10 to 18 years, responded to Kohlberg Moral Judgment Interviews (Colby et al., 1987) and reported their perceptions of family interaction during 2 waves of longitudinal follow-up at the Institute of Human Development, University of California, Berkeley. Relationships between adolescent moral judgment and parent and adolescent perceptions of family structure, decision making, value orientation, moral transmission, and interpersonal relationships were assessed, with age, sex, IQ, and parent moral judgment controlled. Adolescent moral judgment was most consistently related to reports of positive intrafamilial relationships and cognitive stimulation of moral reasoning. Sex differences in relationships between family interaction and moral judgment were also found.