Relationship between Moral Judgment Development and Political Attitude

The purposes of this study were to examine the emotional/political reactions to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the USA and to look at the relationship among moral judgment development, attitude toward to human right and political reactions to terrorist attacks. The current study s results demonstrated that with respect to emotional responses to terrorist attacks, angry and sad appear at the same frequency while the least emotional response is confused . Females report sadness more than males while males report anger more than females in a certain situation. With respect to political action choices to terrorist attack, males tend to consider a retaliatory response when they make political decision while females tend to consider more considerable ways in which we can overcome terrorist situation. Students who get higher moral judgment scores are less likely to insist that we must fight back while students who get lower moral judgment scores are less likely to insist that we should not make hasty decisions. However it is not a significant difference, so we need to have more data and should explore in detail this relationship. In addition, people who have higher scores on attitude on human rights are more likely to consider innocent people s lives when they make political decisions. People who are more considering human rights tend to disagree with action choice 3 we must fight back. Because the survey was administered to dentistry students in January 2002, their emotional responses and their political action choices could be different from what they thought right after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. Finally generalizability issue of the current study is discussed.