The Relationship of Intelligence and Moral Reasoning in the Deviant Behavior Adolescents

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to focus on the personal and family background, intelligence, and moral reasoning development of adolescents with deviant behavior. The study involved 101 deviant adolescents from the Observation and Protection Center in Nakornratchasrima Province, aged between 16-23 years old. This study was sampled using the simple random sampling method, Collecting data using personal and family background questionnaire, the Defining Issues Test (DIT), and the Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM). The study found that the deviant adolescents came from poor families. Their mothers and fathers were low educated, divorced or seperated and a few percents of them were dead. For intelligence, most of deviant adolescents were at the average level but their moral reasoning developmental aspects were lower than the normal child. Moreover, it was found that there were no significant statistical differences, either in the correlation between the moral reasoning judgement score from DIT and the intelligence scores from SPM.