With social experience people develop an understanding of how to organize cooperation (described as """"""""schemes of cooperation,"""""""" """"""""justice concepts,"""""""" """"""""senses of fairness,"""""""" or stages of moral judgment). The general question of interest is how or whether moral judgment plays a determining role in behavior. Assuming that moral judgment is a determinant at least for some of the people some of the time, a method will be devised to assess the degree to which justice considerations power decision making. This measure will be called the """"""""utilizer-nonutilizer"""""""" dimension. In the second study, five behavioral studies will be reanalyzed to see if using the utilizer-nonutilizer dimension as a moderator variable of moral judgment results in greater predictability to social behavior (delinquency, community service, promise-keeping, attitudes towards the law, and political behavior). Then assuming the opposite (that moral judgment is not a cause of behavior but a posteriori rationalization), the third study investigates whether behavior is better predicted from action choice than from moral judgment. The fourth study investigates whether there is an order effect in whether a subject is asked for action choice first or for moral judgment first. These four studies should clarify the direction of causation in the correlation between moral judgment and behavior, and clarify some of the intermediating linkages.
