Moral Line Developmental Profile
Moral Line Developmental Profile Assessment
This interactive tool helps you explore how you reason through moral dilemmas — not just what positions you hold, but the structure of your moral thinking. It adapts the Defining Issues Test (DIT) methodology (Rest, 1979; Rest et al., 1999), which has been validated with over 50,000 participants, for self-guided developmental exploration.
The assessment has three sections:
- Section A (Justice Track): Three moral dilemmas adapted from the DIT tradition. For each, you make a binary decision and then rate the importance of different considerations. Your pattern of ratings reveals which of Rest's three moral schemas — Personal Interest, Maintaining Norms, or Postconventional — you draw on most.
- Section B (Care Track): Two dilemmas designed to surface care-based moral reasoning — attention to relationships, context, and the wellbeing of specific others. This track addresses Gilligan's (1982) critique that Kohlberg's original model focused exclusively on justice.
- Section C (Moral Courage Gap): Five questions exploring the gap between what you believe is right and what you actually do — the Narvaez and Rest (1995) action gap.
At the end, you will receive a schema profile, care orientation score, moral courage gap assessment, and personalised module recommendations. No data is stored or transmitted.
This assessment explores both justice-based and care-based moral reasoning. Both are equally valid developmental tracks, and mature moral development integrates both.
Section A: Justice-Track Moral Reasoning
Below are three moral dilemmas. For each, indicate what you think the person should do, then rate how important each consideration is to your thinking. There are no right or wrong answers — different people weigh different considerations, and all approaches are developmentally informative.
Dilemma 1 of 3
The Heinz Dilemma
A woman is dying from a rare disease. There is one drug that might save her — a form of radium that a druggist in the same town recently discovered. The druggist is charging $2,000 for a small dose, which is ten times what the drug costs to make. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, goes to everyone he knows to borrow money but can only raise $1,000. He tells the druggist his wife is dying and asks to pay later or buy it cheaper. The druggist says, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." Heinz gets desperate and considers breaking into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.
Should Heinz steal the drug?
Rate how important each of the following considerations is to your thinking about this dilemma:
Whether the druggist has a right to charge whatever he wants for a drug he discovered.
Whether Heinz loves his wife enough to risk going to jail for her.
Whether stealing the drug would set a precedent that it is acceptable to take what you need if you are desperate.
Whether the value of a human life outweighs the value of property rights.
Whether Heinz might get caught and sent to jail, leaving his wife alone regardless.
Whether the druggist's refusal respects the dignity of the dying woman.
Whether society depends on people respecting laws even when those laws conflict with personal needs.
Whether a law that protects property at the cost of a human life can be considered a just law.
Dilemma 2 of 3
The Whistleblower
An engineer at a manufacturing company discovers that a product design flaw could cause serious injury to users. The company has already shipped thousands of units and a recall would cost millions, potentially shutting down the division and costing dozens of coworkers their jobs. The engineer's manager tells them to stay quiet — the odds of injury are low, and reporting it would destroy the team's work. The engineer must decide whether to report the flaw to regulators.
Should the engineer report the flaw to regulators?
Rate how important each of the following considerations is to your thinking about this dilemma:
Whether the engineer has a personal obligation to protect their team and coworkers.
Whether obeying the manager's instruction is the right thing to do in a workplace.
Whether the potential harm to users outweighs the harm to the company and its employees.
Whether the engineer could lose their job and damage their career permanently.
Whether there are laws requiring safety reporting that should be followed regardless of personal feelings.
Whether a company that knowingly ships dangerous products violates the social contract that justifies its existence.
Whether the manager's loyalty to the team is understandable given the pressure they are under.
Whether society benefits when professionals are expected to prioritise public safety over organisational loyalty.
Dilemma 3 of 3
Triage Ethics
In a resource-limited emergency, a doctor has one remaining ventilator and two patients who need it to survive. Patient A is a 70-year-old community leader who has mentored hundreds of young people and continues to serve on several nonprofit boards. Patient B is a 25-year-old single parent with a young child. The doctor must decide who receives the ventilator.
Who should receive the ventilator?
Rate how important each of the following considerations is to your thinking about this dilemma:
Whether the doctor is personally closer to one patient or their family.
Whether hospital policy or established triage protocols should determine the decision.
Whether the value of a life should be measured by future potential years or by contributions already made.
Whether the 25-year-old's dependent child creates a special obligation.
Whether the community leader's past contributions create a debt that society should honour.
Whether any fair system for allocating scarce resources must be agreed upon before the emergency, not decided case by case.
Whether the doctor's own emotional comfort with the decision should be considered.
Whether a principle like "save the most life-years" can be consistently applied without discrimination.
Section B: Care-Track Moral Reasoning
The following dilemmas explore moral reasoning through a care and relationship lens. Rate how important each consideration is to your thinking. As with Section A, there are no right or wrong answers.
Care Dilemma 1 of 2
Family Obligation vs. Self-Care
Maria has been the primary caregiver for her aging mother for three years. Her mother's needs are increasing, and Maria has been offered a promotion that would require relocating to another city. Moving would mean better financial security for her own future and her children's education, but would require placing her mother in assisted living. Her mother has said she would feel abandoned. Maria's own health has been declining from the stress of caregiving.
Rate how important each consideration is to your thinking:
How Maria's relationship with her mother would be affected by this decision.
Whether Maria can maintain her caregiving role while also attending to her own wellbeing.
How the decision would affect Maria's children and their relationship with their grandmother.
Whether placing her mother in assisted living could mean better professional care than Maria can provide alone.
How Maria's mother's feelings of abandonment reflect the depth of their bond, not manipulation.
Whether asking "what would a caring person do?" helps more than asking "what are my rights and obligations?"
Care Dilemma 2 of 2
Community Responsibility
David is a member of a close-knit faith community. He recently learned that a beloved community leader engaged in harmful behaviour toward a vulnerable member fifteen years ago. The behaviour was addressed privately at the time, the leader apologised, and the community chose to forgive and move forward. The leader has since done considerable good work. Now, a new member has joined who has a history of being harmed in similar ways. David wonders whether to raise the past incident again.
Rate how important each consideration is to your thinking:
How raising the past would affect the leader, who has genuinely changed and contributed meaningfully since.
How staying silent could affect the new member if they later discover the history on their own.
Whether the community's collective decision to forgive should carry moral weight in David's individual choice.
How David's own relationship with both the leader and the new member shapes his responsibility.
Whether accountability and care can coexist — can the community honour both the leader's growth and the new member's need for safety?
Whether the most caring response is to trust the community's earlier process or to honour the new member's unspoken vulnerability.
Section C: Moral Courage Gap
Knowing what is right and doing what is right are different things. The following questions explore the gap between your moral convictions and your moral actions. Answer honestly — there is no judgment in honest self-awareness.
Question 1 of 5
I often know what the right thing to do is, but find it difficult to actually do it.
Question 2 of 5
When I see someone being treated unfairly, I speak up — even when it would be easier to stay quiet.
Question 3 of 5
I sometimes compromise my moral values to avoid conflict or disapproval from others.
Question 4 of 5
There are moral convictions I hold privately that I rarely express because they differ from what people around me believe.
Question 5 of 5
Looking back at difficult situations in my life, there is a meaningful gap between the person I believe I should have been and how I actually behaved.
Section A is not yet complete (0/3 dilemmas answered). You can still submit to see your profile based on the dilemmas you completed.
No data is stored or transmitted. Your responses remain in this browser session only.