The aim of this paper is to investigate how the real life experiences of elementary school children and junior high school students, and their values concerning life, and their capability to destroy life are involved in their evaluation of life-destroying behavior in a variety of circumstances, and also in their levels of reasoning about life-destroying behaviors. The subjects were 225 elementary school children and 256 junior high school students. First, we showed them four concrete scenes depicting life-destroying behavior, and had them rate on a scale of 1 to 5 whether they were for or against the behavior. We classified the subjects based on their descriptions of their reasoning into levels of reasoning concerning life-destroying behavior. Next, using their answers to the multiple-choice questions on their experiences in real life, their value systems concerning life, and their life-destroying capabilities, we formulated a subscale, using factor analysis, and investigated the relationships with the levels of reasoning. As the results of analysis of variance, it was found that subjects' experiences in real life, their value systems concerning life, and the capability to destroy life were unlikely to act as influential dependent variables that define the subjects' levels of reasoning. The results of multiple regression analyses showed a difference between elementary school pupils and junior high school students in the factors that influenced their approval-disapproval of life-destroying behaviors.

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KJ00005178519

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