Abstract:

The aim of this research was to compare some aspects of moral reasoning between law students and students coming from different academic disciplines (other social sciences and humanities).

The research included 580 participants, all of them students, covering both genders: 350 law students, 123 other social sciences students and 107 humanities students. Participants took the TMR (Test of Moral Reasoning, Proroković, 2016), which measures the index of moral reasoning (in range from 0 to 1), Kohlberg`s stages of moral development, and provides a “rough” estimation of ideological orientations (humanistic and conservative).

The results showed that there was no difference in the moral reasoning index among students of different academic orientations, but the differences were significant with regard to specific stages of moral reasoning (Kohlberg's six stages of moral development). Law students showed certain specificities in relation to other students. Namely, they achieved significantly lower results at first, pre-conventional stage, but also the lowest results at last, post-conventional stage of moral development. As one might expect, the law students achieved the highest scores for the normative level. In addition, the law students showed the lowest level of humanistic orientation when compared to the students of other academic disciplines.

Keywords:

Moral reasoning, law students, ideological orientation, academic orientation, students.