Research has shown that the domain an evaluator considers to be relevant to an issue is/are contingent upon the informational assumptions held by that individual . In the present investigation, informational assumptions were examined to see if they are relevant to understanding differences between individuals’ judgments of non-prototypical social issues. Research discussed in Turiel et al. is reviewed below in order to explain the value of the specific methodology of the present study. In their monograph, Turiel et al. discuss two features of non-prototypical societal issues. Their research suggests that 1) “evaluations and judgments of the non-prototypical issues are associated with differing assumptions,” and that, 2) “there may be ambiguities in the understanding of these assumptions that contribute to inconsistencies within individuals’ judgments” . An example from the authors’ monograph is discussed as a means of demonstrating how informational assumptions are part of the non-prototypical character of certain issues and how individuals come to judge such issues. In Turiel et al. , evaluations regarding the acceptability of having an abortion illustrate the role of informational assumptions in one’s judgment about the issue. Findings from this research suggested that assumptions about when life begins were related to evaluations about the acceptability of abortion. Those that judged abortion to be wrong did so on the basis that abortion is ‘killing’ because life begins at conception. However,best way to dry cannabis those that judged abortion as acceptable within a certain time frame of the pregnancy did so on the basis that life begins within the last trimester before birth.
Additionally, ambiguities and uncertainties within these assumptions complicated the matter further and made judgments seem inconsistent at times. The following are examples of such variables: Even individuals who believe abortion is wrong may still allow for exceptions in cases of incest, rape, or if the pregnant woman’s life is in danger , while those who generally support abortion rights may too object to an abortion if it is being sought as a means of choosing the sex of the child or as a kind of birth control. Such complicated features of the issue and the related informational assumptions that individuals drew upon to reach their judgments were critical to understanding their evaluations. Just as with abortion, the informational assumptions involved in marijuana use can also be related to individuals’ evaluations of this issue. Informational assumptions are often the bases for individuals’ judgments – they are often the reasons or evidence that one points to when justifying one’s ultimate evaluation. And these informational assumptions that one holds may apply to more than one of the social domains of reasoning. The present investigation is based on the proposition that the variances and/or ambiguities in individuals’ informational assumptions in fact implicate the variances in their domain classifications of ambiguous issues. In other words, the variability in the informational assumptions that comprise an issue gives it its non-prototypical quality. Relating this to marijuana use, various informational assumptions may become salient in one’s judgment about this issue. As previously mentioned, marijuana use might raise concerns about personal freedoms and choices, prudential concerns regarding harm to the self, and/or conventional concerns regarding rules, laws, and social expectations.
Such concerns stem from an individual’s informational assumptions about the potential harm marijuana use can cause to one’s memory and motivation, informational assumptions about the legality of the drug and the likelihood and degree of problems that could result with authorities if caught with the drug. One might also consider information assumptions regarding the risk of trying a “gateway drug” that may lead to involvement with more dangerous and addictive drugs like cocaine or heroin. The above examples of potential considerations are provided to illustrate the ways in which informational assumptions can influence one’s reasoning about the issue and, thereby, one’s evaluations about the acceptability of the act. In other words, informational assumptions have implications for how an issue is conceptualized, and thereby, judged. For example, conventional considerations about legality and getting into trouble with the law are more likely to lead to judgments that use is not all right whereas personal considerations about freedom to choose are more likely to lead to judgments that is all right despite other factors. It thus follows that understanding the informational assumptions and reasons that individuals draw upon when justifying their judgments about an issue can help elucidate the basis for their evaluation of the acceptability of act or issue . Accordingly, in the present study, adolescents’ informational assumptions regarding marijuana use were examined as a means of understanding their judgments about this issue. By asking adolescents to report whether they think that frequent use of marijuana is harmful to the user, this study elucidated some of the informational assumptions this sample of adolescents maintains regarding the physical and/or psychological harm involved in marijuana use.
Thus, the present study adds to the field of research by inquiring about the reasons behind adolescents’ judgments about marijuana use and the informational assumptions that are part and parcel to their reasoning process. Previous studies investigating adolescents’ reasoning about ambiguous social matters have suggested that whereas individuals consistently judge prototypical issues within the same domains, there are higher degrees of divergence in their judgments about the more equivocal ambiguous social issues such as drug use. As will become apparent in the following literature review, studies that have investigated the complexities of social thinking about certain ambiguous issues such as drug use have been somewhat inconsistent and inconclusive. This suggests the need for further research in this area. In addition to demonstrating this need, the following review also provides the groundwork for the present investigation by explaining what has been understood thus far about adolescents’ domain reasoning about social issues such as drug use, as well as other more prototypical issues. In one of the first studies to investigate drug use through a social domain framework, Nucci, Guerra, and Lee found that not only did adolescents show domain-specificity in their reasoning about drug use, but their judgments correlated their engagement in these acts. Results suggested that the majority of the participants in their study evaluated drug use as a personal or prudential matter, rather than moral or conventional. Moreover, whereas high drug users were far more likely than low-drug users to judge drug use as a purely personal matter, low drug-users were more likely than high-drug users to judge drug use as a prudential matter. Such results show that adolescents made distinctions between the personal and the prudential . Similar findings emerged in a study on adolescents’ moral reasoning and engagement in risk-taking behaviors that included antisocial behavior , substance involvement , sexual activity, and suicidal thoughts . Consistent with the Nucci and colleagues study, researchers found that, overall, adolescents evaluated substance use, sexual activity,how to cure cannabis and suicide as issues within the personal domain . On the other hand, the respondents in this study evaluated anti-social behavior as a moral matter because it involves the rights, justice, and welfare of others. It is important to note, however, that Kuther and Higgins-D’Alessandro asked participants to classify substance use as within one of three domains, the moral, conventional, or personal. Because they did not allow for participants to classify the issue as within prudential domain, it is unclear whether respondents who expressed personal and/or moral considerations with regard to substance use were likewise thinking about prudential concerns .
This important distinction between two or more social domains may be a confounding factor in the results of the study; as it may be in other research on adolescents’ reasoning about substance use that likewise demonstrated unclear results by failing to clearly distinguish one or more domains from the others. Similar to the above research, studies by Abide, Richards, and Ramsay and Amonini and Donovan asked respondents to classify certain behaviors like consuming alcohol and smoking marijuana, but failed to make clear distinctions between the moral and the prudential domains. In the Abide et al. study, teens were asked to evaluate acts as either moral or personal . Because response choices were limited to these two domains, results did not provide a clear picture about which factors were most salient to adolescents’ thinking. Moreover, just as in the Kuther and Higgins-D’Alessandro study, the manner in which Abide and colleagues defined the ‘moral’ domain may have muddled the moral domain with the prudential domain; responses indicating that the matter is “wrong, regardless of existing laws,” were coded as moral classifications although respondents may have been thinking in prudential terms when selecting this response. Similarly, the study by Amonini and Donovan simply asked respondents to evaluate whether marijuana use as “morally wrong.” While results indicated that 93% of respondents evaluated marijuana use as wrong in ‘some’ or ‘any’ circumstances, it was again unclear as to whether some respondents evaluated marijuana use as ‘wrong’ due to prudential lines of thinking, such as it being wrong to engage in acts that are harmful to oneself. In both these studies, differentiating between respondents’ moral and prudential concerns could have produced clearer and more conclusive results regarding respondents’ true judgments about marijuana use. The value of distinguishing between moral and prudential considerations is evidenced by research that has in fact shown that some adolescents predominantly think within prudential terms when evaluating substance use. Tisak, Tisak, and Rogers found that prudential concerns were primary when adolescents were asked about parents and friends’ interference with one’s substance use. When asked about the legitimacy of rules against cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use, teens’ obligation to obey these, and their obligation to respond to a friend’s use, adolescents responded with primarily prudential reasons to support their evaluations. Though younger adolescents were more likely than older adolescents to express support for the legitimacy of parents’ rules against these substances and their own obligation to obey , the majority of respondents said it would be legitimate to tell an authority about friend smoking marijuana due to prudential reasons . Thus, this study specifically exploring prudential considerations in teens’ thinking about marijuana use indicated that this domain is a relevant to adolescents’ thinking about use. The research in this field thus suggests that teens perceive features related to the moral, personal, and prudential domains when thinking about marijuana use, making this a complex social issue that does not clearly fall into one of the social domains of reasoning like unambiguous social issues. This complexity has perhaps best been exemplified in research by Killen, Leviton, and Cahill . This study revealed that adolescents do make clear domain distinctions regarding unambiguous social matters, but recognize the grey areas involved in more complex social issues and demonstrate more ambiguity in their judgments accordingly. Findings from the study again demonstrated that teens clearly distinguish between the moral, conventional, and personal domains, and they classify clear-cut issues accordingly. But the study also revealed the ambiguities encompassed in issues such as drug use, as well as complexity of judgments that results from these ambiguities. By asking teens about specific types drugs, the researchers found that adolescents’ evaluations and justifications involved various considerations, and that domain distinctions were even made within a specific issue . Results indicated that the respondents’ domain judgments about each drug presented were based on the respondents’ individual perceptions of each specific drug’s degree of harmfulness. For example, more benign drugs like caffeine and nicotine were classified as a “personal choice” by the majority of respondents. However, a potentially more harmful drug like marijuana was categorized as a “personal choice” issue only 33% of time; respondents tended to classify marijuana use either a moral or conventional matter. Use of cocaine and crack, on the other hand, was categorized as ‘wrong independent of authority and laws’ more often than any of the other drugs – the authors explained that this was seemingly due to participants’ understanding of the harmfulness of these drugs, and concluded that adolescents judged the use of more ‘dangerous’ or ‘harmful’ drugs as within the moral domain. Following this line of reasoning, it can be presumed that participants’ classification of marijuana use as within the personal and moral domains is in line with the mixed perceptions of the harmfulness of marijuana use in society.