This study investigated the relationship between a reader's level of moral development and his preferred mode of response to literature. It was prompted by a common concern of high school English teachers: the difficulty experienced by many adolescent readers in responding to the secondary literature curriculum through an interpretive mode. The study hypothesized that adolescent readers operating at the principled level of moral development as tested by James Rest's Determining Issues Test (DIT) would prefer the interpretive mode. Readers at levels below the principled would more frequently choose any of six other modes of response to the same three short stories. Subjects were 74 caucasian, middle-class, adolescent boys from a suburban high school in the San Francisco Bay Area. They completed Rest's DIT and other tests. Test results and respondents' ages and reading abilities were analyzed statistically. The major hypothesis was borne out at the .05 level of significance. The principled thinkers as defined by the DIT significantly more often chose interpretive responses. (Author)