Morality And Gender Stereotypes

This study tested the hypothesis that reading a moral dilemma from a blue sheet of paper will make a person understand and view the main character’s action as moral than on red paper. The results of the experiment do not support the hypothesis. When comparing color to the what the participants have answered on the 6-point Likert scale question, the results are non-significant because doing an ANOVA test with these two variables exhibited a p value greater than .05. No matter what color was tested, participants answered an average of around 4 points. As shown in figure 1, people answered mostly slightly agree, and no extreme variation appeared between blue, red, or white colors. White was the control color since everyone reads and works on white

The results produced in this study suggest that none of the variables tested seem to influence a person’s morality. In previous research about color and morality, De Bock, Pandelaere, and Van Kenhove (2013) study of morality and color found participants rated less negatively on bad consumer behavior if present on a red background while they rated positively on good consumer behavior on a green background. While Glover’s (2001) study found that gender did not affect a person’s moral reasoning and that justice and caring orientation were the factors, this current study cannot determine if participants were in justice or caring orientation. Even if we were able to in this study, seeing that gender was insignificant in influencing morality, it is possible that either justice or caring orientation had no influence as well. De Bock, Pandelaere, and Van Kenhove’s study present that color does influence morality, even though it’s not in the direction of our hypothesis. The results of this study go against what De Bock found, and there could be explanations as to why the results don’t match up with previous

The story probably did not resonate with the participants as they read through it. The story features miners trapped in a mine and not giving aid to an injured person to allow the other miners to survive with the limited oxygen supply. This story could be seen as too extreme and unrelated to students who’ve never worked in a mine before. If the story was more relatable to students, maybe then participants would have been invested in the story and other factors might start influencing morality such as color. Another explanation for this result could be uncontrolled environment. Our group went around the university grounds to collect data from students. The time of day, if participants have already eaten, if participants are doing work, the energy level of the participants when participating in the study, and the color shirts each group member was wearing that day might have influenced the results of this study. A third reason that the resulted turn out as they did is we were not consistent with the coloring. Our moral dilemma was printed on white, blue, and red sheets of paper, but our consent form, demographic form, and the question were all printed on white paper. If the all sheets were printed in their respected color to cement and amplify the color factor, result might have turned out