Context creates compromise: how contextual information and social distance affect moral judgment in Filipino culture

Morally ambiguous activities bear different moral impressions across contexts and cultures. 107 college students were presented with four different vignettes of a person getting intoxicated and then asked to answer a morality-rating scale pertaining to the heavy drinker. The vignettes differed in perceived social distance (the heavy drinker being a close friend versus a stranger) and contextual information (the person drinking because of the internal trait of sensation-seeking versus the external occurrences of peer influence). Results show that a heavy drinker was rated more moral when drinking due to an external occurrence of peer influence rather than an internal trait of sensation seeking (p=.015), and that there was no difference in moral judgment when the heavy drinker was a close friend or a stranger. Findings help shed light on the complex interplay of culture and context when examining moral judgment formation in a Filipino context.