Grace Picone, Emily Morse, Jasmine Odle

The current research offers a new insight into how college students deal with different moral dilemmas particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. To do so, interviews were done online in two waves about 4 months apart. The timing of the interviews occurred between February 2021 and May 2021, which was when the COVID vaccine was first widely administered. In the beginning of Time 1 of the interview, 32,222,402 doses were administered in the US, and 243,463,471 doses were administered by May 1, 2021 (COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States, Jurisdiction, 2021). Two dilemmas, the COVID and the Grandma dilemmas, were presented to each participant with a set of questions asking their opinions and solutions for these moral dilemmas. The results show that two different types of moral dilemmas successfully uncovered young people’s different types of decision-making styles. Female participants were more likely to restructure the dilemma compared to males who tended to make a definitive decision. Participant’s decisions changed from Time 1 to Time 2 which could have resulted from a moral developmental change, contextual environmental change, or both.