Do More Androgynous Self-Images Lead to Higher Levels of Moral Development?

Do More Androgynous Self-Images Lead to Higher Levels of Moral Development? Throughout our lives we undergo many developmental changes. Two developmental areas of interest are self image and moral development. As we move through the developmental stages, the way we interpret sex roles and our self-image according to those changes, as does the way we interpret moral dilemmas. There are several theories that claim different forms of development parallel with our sex role self-concept (i.e Loevinger’s ego development theory. Leahy & Eiter, 1980). Our sex role self-concept may also parallel the development of post conventional moral thinking; meaning that those who are more androgynous will have higher post conventional moral thinking as both require not seeing things in black and white so to speak. Robert L. Leahy and Marie Eiter (1980) conducted a study looking at moral judgment and the development of real and ideal androgynous self-image. Their study was designed to look at age-related differences in sex role self-concept and whether or not post conventional moral judgments are associated with androgynous real/ideal self-concepts (Leahy & Eiter, 1980). Leahy and Eiter (1980) claimed that the use of post conventional moral judgment would be associated with more androgynous real and ideal self-image. They also believed that androgyny increased with age (Leahy & Eiter, 1980). Leahy’s and Eiter’s (1980) study included 116 adolescent and you adult participants. The participants were from one of three age groups with an equal amount of boys and girls in each; eighth graders with an average age of 13.7, high school juniors with an average age of 17.2, and college aged students with an average age of 20.6 (Leahy & Eiter, 1980). The high school students were mostly middle-class white students from the same public school district in a NYC suburb (Leahy & Eiter