Exposure to political violence and moral foundations theory: The investigation of moral foundations of Syrian adolescents who has been exposed to war and Turkish adoelscents who has no experience of war

To investigate the effects of exposure to war on moral reasoning of adolescents, two groups differing in their levels of exposure to war was compared: Turks (n=23) who has no experience of war and Syrians (n=23)who has been exposed to war. More specifically, moral foundations of Syrian and Turkish adolescents were examined through Moral Foundations Scenarios involving moral violations, under two conditons: political and non-political conditions. The participants' responses to Moral Foundations Scenarios were analyzed through content analysis. Considering the results of Who am I test, the differentiation in the moral judgements of Turkish and Syrian adolescents are considered to be related to political violence rather than culture.. While there has found no difference between Turkish and Syrian adolescents moral judgements for care, loyalty and purity scenarios with respect to the conditions of the scenarios (political and non-political conditions), unlike Turkish adolescents, Syrians' moral judgements for fairness and authority scenarios were found be different in political and non-political conditions. For fairness and purity scenarios, while Syrian adolescents judged the behavior as moral violation under non-political conditions, they morally justified the behavior under political conditions by offering several excuses. This finding reflects the effect of political violence of adolescents' moral foundations, and points out the importance of use of political scenarios which reveals the nuances in adolescents' moral reasoning who has been exposed to war. Finally, inferences were made about the validity of the MFT in modern, Muslim and Middle Eastern samples, proposed prototypical emotions, and content of the moral foundations.