Gender Differences in Implicit Moral Orientation Associations: the Justice and Care Debate Revisited

Employing new measures (Implicit Association Test) to study the classic issue of moral orientations, we predicted and found gender differences in implicit associations to the concepts of justice and care. Specifically, we found that men more strongly associate justice vs. care with importance and with themselves than women. However, participants’ explicit ratings did not reveal any clear patterns of gender differences, which is consistent with previous studies. Implications for social psychological theory and research on morality are discussed.