Moral Development and Family Environment: Relationship between Moral Reasoning, Attachment Security and Family Typology

Abstract

The present study was carried out to examine relationship of moral reasoning with family typology and attachment security among youngsters. The Defining Issues Test (Rest, 1986) was used as a measure of moral reasoning. The Family Typology scale (Bhatti, Channabasavanna, Prabhu, Krishna, and Rao, 1985) was used to measure family environment. Kerns Security Scale (Kerns, 1996) was the instrument to measure attachment security. The sample consisted of 100 students (50 males and 50 females) within the age group of 17-21 years from various colleges in Chandigarh. The data were subjected to statistical analyses and correlations were calculated. The results indicate a significant negative relation between moral reasoning and family pathology, egoistic family and anomic family typologies.