Rules Differentiation Ability Among Pakistani Adolescents

120 adolescents, aged 13, 15, and 17 years paired two brief stories of rule violations of one rule domain against a third one which belonged to another rule domain. The explanations for pairing were classified into three categories depicting the level at which the adolescents understand the basis and rationale of the differences between five rule systems studied: moral, legal, conventional, ascriptive and interpersonal. Where a gradual advance in adolescents' ability to explain the differences between various rule domains was discovered, the differentiation ability in itself seemed to have well established before adolescence. Moreover, though adolescents perceive rules as belonging to various domains of social life, they tend to interpret the violations of these rules as having moral implications. Some measures for better experimental controls have been suggested.