Measuring the moral sense: morality tests in continental Europe between 1910 and 1930

Abstract

Although historians of psychological and educational sciences have not completely neglected early research in the field of morality testing, European contributions to the measurement of ethical judgement and moral feeling have not received much historical attention. In this paper, two principal, experimental paradigms that emerged in early European research are described and framed within their sociopolitical contexts. From 1910 to 1930, European researchers administered the justification test, wherein deviant youngsters were asked to justify fictitious moral decisions; and the ranking test, wherein subjects were asked to arrange moral transgressions by order of their seriousness. Both tests sought to contribute to the contemporary fight against juvenile delinquency. The justification test was devised to support political pleas for upping the age of legal responsibility. The ranking test sought to introduce a scientifically based selection and classification system for difficult youths.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 7 citations exist upstream.