Although Kohlberg and others have proposed that various social psychological and cultural factors may influence a person's level of moral reasoning, most work in this area has been conducted among relatively well educated persons in so called advanced societies. These two studies investigated stages of reasoning about moral dilemmas among nonliterate and unschooled adults in a rapidly changing society in a Mexican border city. Uneducated adults (N=34) participated in the first study. Dilemmas in which two or more principles were at stake were presented. The study located people functioning at stage 3/4 (the stage of formal operations). These persons differed from others in terms of exposure to different cultural and organizational contexts and responsibility for others' welfare as leaders. Based upon the hypotheses derived from this first study the second used a 2 by 2 by 2 factorial design to examine moral reasoning among high and low socioeconomic status Mexican high school students (N=30), with high or low contact with another culture, who were or were not identified as leaders. As predicted, results suggested that higher socioeconomic status and leadership are associated with higher stages of moral reasoning. For leaders, crosscultural contact facilitated reasoning at a higher stage. For nonleaders, it did not. Crosscultural contact by itself had no effect. (Author/ABL)