RESEARCH REPORT NO.21 "Morality of Thai Youth" by Duangduen Bhanthumanvin Penlhae Prachonpachanuk (1976) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Origin of the project : At present, Thailand is undergoing developmental changes in all areas. The most important area, which will make other changes more effective is the area of population development. However, population development has not been given adequate attention due to the lack of information on the natures of the Thai peoples and their societies Since morality is the pre – requisite for good citizenship and democratic actions, therefore, moral education and training should be one of the first tasks in the population development program. This research project was designed to investigate the nature of morality of Thai youth. The research objectives were twofolded, First, it was aimed at discovering the nature of development of morality in various types of Thai youths, and comparing the normal characteristics of the educated young people who came from different sectors of the Thai society, and received different types of child-rearing practices. A field study was conducted to find the relationships among these variables, Secondly, this project aimed at discovering the causal relationships between some situational characteristics and cheating behavior of male adolescents. In addition, the effects of the interaction between the situational influences and personal moral characteristics on cheating behavior were also examined, A laboratory experiment was conducted to find evidences of these causal relationships. 2. Scope and methodology : In the field study, over one thousand and four hundred school and university – students completed sets of questionnaires designed to assess the followings : level of moral resoning (based on Kohlberg’s theory of moral development) future orientation, verbal skill, social characteristics and four typr types of child-rearing practices. The age of the male and female respondents ranged from 11 to 25 years. All of them were living in Bangkok at the time. The data were analyzed by using various statistical methods in a high – power computer. Many interesting and significant findings were obtained which will be mentioned in the next section. In the laboratory experiment, three hundred male adolescents (ages ranged from 13 to 15 years) were invited to play a game in which they were tempted to cheat to win a prize. Half of these adolescents were told that they would receive the prize at the end of the game. The other half was told that they had to wait for two weeks before the prizes would be distributed to the winners. Then each type of subjects were further divided into five groups. The first four groups encountered a model who did not cheat in the game. For any group of subjects this model appeared to be one of the four types as follow : a shame model who felt glad about not cheating, a guilt model who felt glad about not cheating, a shame model who felt sad about not cheating, and a guilt model who felt sad about not cheating. The fifth group of subjects met a university student who did not mention about his own behavior while playing the game. There ewer many dependent variables in this experiment. The data on cheating behavior were analyzed by the use of chi-Square Tests. The continous variables were analyzed by using the three – factor Analysis of Varianee with factorial designs. The matrices of correlation coefficients of all the dependent variables were also computed. 3. Important research findings : In the field study, it was found as expected that the students who came from lower class family showed slower rate of moral development than the students from other socio-economic classes. However, the lower class students could catch up with others when they were in the last few years of highschool and in the university. On the other hand, it was contrary to expectation to find that older respondents were less future oriented than younger ones. This evidence suggested that there may be two age groups with low future orientation instead of one, namely the young children group and the middle adolescent group. Child rearing practices were found to have significant contributions toward the development of moral reasoning and future orientations. The respondents who reported that they came from a high love-oriented and high-reasoning family showed high level of moral reasoning. Furthermore, love-oriented, reasoning and psychological punishment methods were positively related to future orientation. These three types of child-rearing practices together with the control-oriented practice were the four aspects of a democratic home. The results from the field study showed that democratic environment was necessary for the lower class children to develop high level of morality. In addition, moderately high control rather than high permissiveness should be practiced in these families. The experimental results revealed as hypotesized, that the situational characteristics exerted differential influence on cheating behavior of the male adolescents. That is, in the situations where rewarding would be immediate, and the well-behaved in great number. However, in the delayed-reward situation, and the model-present situation, the high moral scorers cheated significanty less than the low moral scorers, Furthermore, the guilt model who showed higher level of morality than the shame model could induced more honest behavior in these adolescents. In addition, for some types of adolescents, the shame model was on more effective in inducing honesty than no-model. Interesting patterns of relationships between moral reasoning, future orientation and cheating behavior were found, more specifically, among the low moral scorers the ones with low future orientation score cheated less than the ones with high score, in most of the experimental conditions. On the contrary, when the high moral scorer were examined, the ones with high future orientation score cheated less than the ones with high future orientation were consonant with the results in an American study. In addition, cheating behavior of the Thai adolescents in this experiment was found to relate to their moral attitudes and their anxiety. More specifically, the subjects who cheated in the experimental game did not appreciate honesty and other virtues as much, and were more anxious than the ones who did not cheat. 4. Possible applications : Since the present research project yielded some basic informations on the nature of morality of the Thai youth, many possible applications of these results are suggested as follow : Academic area : Since the present research project has been an original study and the research report contains an extensive review of the research literature in the area of morality, high academic value is evident. The research findings are academic knowledge which can be included in many courses in developmental and social psychology especially the ones given in Thailand. The research report itself can also be used for supplementary reading in these courses. New ideas for further research on Thai morality have also been suggested. Child-rearing area : The results from the field study strongly suggested that child-rearing practices or familial environments were important for the development of morality in the Thai youth. Democratic environment can be created by the use of the four methods of child-rearing, namely, love-oriented, reasoning, psychological punishment and control-oriented. Thus, the present research findings can be used as evidence to inform parents, in order to improve their methods of child rearing. Moral education area : This research project can be seen as a research evaluation of moral training and moral education in the Thai society. The findings have also suggested the ways to improve the effectiveness of moral education’s program. The experimental results pointed to the fact that moral education program which concentrates only on the training of moral attitude is inadequate in producing good citizenship and democratic actions. An effective program of moral education should consist of three types of ego-strength, and the training of wholesome moral attitudes. This research report has included detailed descriptions of the nature of moral development in different age group. Population and social development areas : The experimental findings have stressed the facts that personal characteristics are secondary in importance in influencing moral behavior of the individuals. It was found that the characteristics of the tempting situation exerted much stronger influence on the behavior of the individual. Thus the training for high morality can be of some benefits to the society only when the social environment can elicit moral responses and moral actions from the highly moral individuals. On the other hand, morality theorists have been convinced that only moral society can breed moral members. Therefore, it is the duty of all social agents to build the Thai social conditions which will facilitate the population’s development of morality. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SWUHOMEPAGEBack to Behavioral Science Research Institute