Abstract:
The purpose of this experiment was to study the effects of modeling on moral development of youths. The subjects were 300 school-boys from M.S. 1 and M.S. 2 ehose average age was 14 years and 8 months. They were randomly assigned to one of the 4 experimental groups or a control group. Each group cinsisted of 60 subjects. The subject in each group were either high or low moral scorers. The experimental subjects met either a shame or guilt model who expressed either joy or sorrow that he did not cheat in a game. The control subjects played this game but did not meet any model. After they had finished playing the game, all of the subjects were administered questionnaires which assessed anxiety while playing this game and their perceived value of reward. The results of this experiment showed that the highly anxious subjects and the ones who did not meet the model cheated the most. Eventhough the subjects's moral level could not predict accurately their cheating behavior, but its importance was in pointing out that if there was a chance to imitate a good model, the subjects who had high morality would imitate the most. On the other hand, the low moral scorers would only imitate the mdel when they were highl