Evaluating Moral Schemata Learning

Students involving in a moral development course that included a dilemma discussion were tested in a semantic priming experiment and in an attention experiment before and after the course. The first experiment compared reaction times of “moral related words” with “non related words” whereas the second experiment tested if moral “related words” had an effect on attention tasks after the course. Here, moral related words were obtained from a semantic network technique that generates moral schemata based on subjects’ moral knowledge but not from an idiosyncratic moral schema. Results showed a priming effect on “moral related words” only after the course. The second experiment also showed significant differences for “moral related words” after the course. Implications for moral education and moral cognitive modeling are presented.