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Preschoolers’ gap in understanding of moral and prudential transgressions in real-life parent–child encounters
Early Child Development and Care
Abstract
This paper reports young (3–5 year-olds’) children’s cognitive and affective understanding of actual moral (harm to others) and prudential (harm to self) transgressions in the family, as reported by the parent, but in a way that provides the child the opportunity to reflect on and reason about the actual events. A total of 38 parent–child dyads participated. Findings illuminate different levels of moral understanding during preschool years. Specifically, there was a sharp break between the understanding of 3 and 4–5 year-olds for both transgressions. However, across all age groups, the rate of increased relevance of the reasoning to the act was greater for prudential than for moral transgressions, and the understanding of own feelings as an agent of the transgression developed more slowly in the moral than the prudential domains. Unexpectedly, many 3 year-olds failed to understand the dangers inherent in prudential transgressions.
Pengembangan nilai moral agama erat kaitannya tentang budi pekerti seorang anak, sikap sopan santun, kemauan melaksanakan ajaran agama dalam kehidupan sehari-hari. Pola pembiasaan pendidikan agama Islam anak usia dini dalam keluarga yang baik sehingga nantinya mampu menjaga keimanannya untuk berbuat sesuai ajaran agama dan moralitasnya. Tujuannya untuk mengetahui pola pembiasaan pendidikan agama islam untuk anak usia dini di lingkungan keluarga: studi kasus TK YAMMBA Jatibarang. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode deskriptif kualitatif dengan sampel dalam penelitian ini adalah anak TK YAMMBA Jatibarang Brebes. Hasil penelitian pada penelitian ini adalah pembiasaan pendidikan agama Islam anak usia dini melalui Profil Pelajar Pancasila dimensi Beriman, Bertakwa kepada Tuhan Yang Maha Esa, dan Berakhlak Mulia pada kegiatan intrakurikuler diimplementasikan melalui lima model, yaitu: pembiasaan, keteladanan, pembinaan disiplin peserta didik, pembelajaran partisipatif, dan program kegiatan sekolah.
Moral justifications work, when they do, by invoking values that are shared in the common ground of the interlocutors. We asked 3- and 5-year-old peer dyads (N = 144) to identify and punish norm transgressors. In the moral condition, the transgressor violated a moral norm (e.g., by stealing); in the social rules condition, she/he violated a context-specific rule (e.g., by placing a yellow toy in a green box, instead of a yellow box). Children in both age groups justified their punishment in the social rules condition mostly by referring to the rule (e.g., “He must put yellow toys in the yellow box”). In contrast, in the moral condition they mostly justified their punishment by simply referring to the observed fact (e.g., “He stole”), seeing no need to state the norm involved (e.g., “He must not steal”), presumably because they assumed this as part of their moral common ground with their partner. These results suggest that preschoolers assume certain common ground moral values with their peers and use these in formulating explicit moral judgments and justifications.
Associations among hypothetical, prototypic moral, and conventional judgments; theory of mind (ToM); empathy; and personal distress were examined in 108 socioeconomically diverse preschoolers (Mage = 42.94 months, SD = 1.42). Repeated measures analysis of covariance with empathy, false beliefs, and their interaction as covariates indicated that empathy was significantly associated with judgments of greater moral but not conventional transgression severity, particularly for psychological harm, and with deserved punishment for unfairness. False beliefs were associated with (combined) moral criterion judgments of rule and authority independence and inalterability. Empathy also was positively associated with criterion judgments but only for children low in ToM. Personal distress was unrelated to judgments. Results demonstrate the importance of both affective and cognitive processes in preschoolers' moral judgments.
Traffic injuries represent an important danger to children’s health. Safe traffic behavior requires both perceptual and cognitive abilities as well as compliance with traffic rules. The present study examines the relationship between knowledge of traffic rules, perception of traffic danger, moral judgment, self-regulation, and compliance with traffic rules among preschool children. It also examined gender differences across the study variables. A sample of 100 children aged 3–6 years participated in the study. Knowledge of traffic rules, perception of danger, and compliance with rules were assessed by interviewing each child using photos of traffic situations. Two components of self-regulation – impulse control and following an adult’s directions – were assessed using the Tower Task, the Tower Clean Up Task, and the Toy Sorting Task from the Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment. Moral judgment was assessed using Piaget’s task of stealing/clumsiness. Significant positive relationships among knowledge of rules, perception of danger, and self-reported compliance with rules were found. The ability to quickly follow an adult’s directions predicted greater self-reported compliance with rules over and above perception of danger and knowledge of rules. There were no significant gender differences in any of the variables. Using our results, educational programs for preschoolers could seek to improve their traffic knowledge of rules, perception of traffic danger, and self-regulation.
This study examined preschool children's conceptions of moral and social-conventional rules. 44 children between the ages of 2-6 and 4-9 were divided into 2 groups of 21 and 23 children according to age (X̄=3-3, 4-2). Children made judgments concerning the seriousness, rule contingency, rule relativism, and amount of deserved punishment for 10 (depicted) moral and conventional preschool transgressions. Analyses of variance with age and sex as between-group factors and domain as the within-group factor indicated that, constant across both sexes and the ages studied, children evaluated moral transgressions as more serious offenses and as more deserving of punishment than conventional transgressions. Moreover, moral events were less likely than conventional events to be regarded as contingent on the presence of a rule and relative to the social context. Test-retest reliability of the ratings of the seriousness of transgressions was .66 over a 2-3 week period. The findings were discussed in relation to the developmental differentiation model and the distinct conceptual domain approach.
This study examined toddlers' naturally occurring moral and conventional transgressions in the home. Toddlers (
N = 36), divided between boys and girls at 24 and 36 months of age, were videotaped in two 45-min sessions, one with mothers and one with mothers and familiar peers. Responses to moral and conventional transgressions were coded from the videotapes. Moral transgressions were more frequent in the peer session, whereas conventional transgressions were more frequent when children were alone with mothers. Mothers' responses to conventional transgressions focused on social order and social regulation, whereas maternal and child responses to moral transgressions focused the transgressor on the consequences of the acts for others' rights or welfare. Mothers' affective responses to moral and conventional transgressions did not differ but were more negative than toddlers' responses. Conventional transgressions increased with age, whereas girls' (but not boys') moral transgressions decreased with age. Sequential analyses suggested that this latter finding might be due to mothers' differential responses to girls' and boys' moral transgressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Maltreated and nonmaltreated preschoolers' (mean age = 4 years 6 months) judgments regarding hypothetical and actual moral transgressions were examined. Thirty-six maltreated children (17 physically abused and 19 neglected) and 19 comparison nonmaltreated children judged, justified, and evaluated affective responses to 6 hypothetical moral transgressions. Perpetrators and victims also judged and evaluated affective responses to actual classroom moral transgressions. All children evaluated moral transgressions as very serious, punishable, and wrong in the absence of rules. Moral judgments and justifications differed as a function of context (hypothetical vs actual) and type of transgression but not maltreatment status. Affective responses differed as a function of maltreatment subtype and gender. Maltreated and nonmaltreated children may differ in the organization of their affective responses rather than in their moral evaluations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In this chapter, we first examine the notion that emotions and reasoning are distinct entities. Second, we describe empirical research with children, which has demonstrated the developmental pattern of the intertwining of emotions and judgments. Third, we describe the emotions that form the basis of morality as it emerges throughout development, and which reflect positive dimensions of morality, such as empathy and respect for persons. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Investigated the distinction between intending an act and intending a consequence of the act using 25 children at each of 3 age levels: 5, 7, and 9 yrs. Ss acted as either the agent, inexperienced observer, or experienced observer in a simple choose and match game. Results indicate that Ss in all 3 roles were almost equally successful in judging intentionality and that they were able to assess the intentions of others as well as they could assess their own. (French abstract) (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
24 Ss (aged 3–9 yrs) played a card game against an adult opponent that required strategic actions indicating recursive awareness of intention. Behavioral measures of success indicated that recursive strategies were used by Ss aged 5 yrs and older but not by 3-yr-olds. Verbal indicators of recursion showed a developmental lag relative to the behavioral measures. Ss appeared to be better at retaliating against deceptive strategies than at initiating them. First-level awareness of the opponent's visual processes appeared at younger ages than did recursive awareness of intention. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Developmental trajectories and individual differences in 70 American middle-income 2½- to 4-year olds' moral judgments were examined 3 times across 1 year using latent growth modeling. At Wave 1, children distinguished hypothetical moral from conventional transgressions on all criteria, but only older preschoolers did so when rating deserved punishment. Children's understanding of moral transgressions as wrong independent of authority grew over time. Greater surgency and effortful control were both associated with a better understanding of moral generalizability. Children higher in effortful control also grew more slowly in understanding that moral rules are not alterable and that moral transgressions are wrong independent of rules. Girls demonstrated sharper increases across time than boys in understanding the nonalterability of moral rules.
Associations between young children's developing theory of mind (ToM) and judgments of prototypical moral transgressions were examined 3 times across 1 year in 70 American middle class 2.5- to 4-year-olds. Separate path models controlling for cross-time stability in judgments, within-time associations, and children's age at Wave 1 indicated that across both 6-month intervals, children who evaluated moral acts as more wrong independent of authority had more mature ToM 6 months later; in addition, judgments of moral transgressions as less permissible at Wave 2 also led to more advanced ToM at Wave 3. Children with more advanced ToM judged that moral rules are more alterable, however, and rated moral transgressions as less deserving of punishment. Finally, more advanced ToM initially led to evaluations of moral transgressions as less independent of rules and then to judgments of moral transgressions as more independent of rules. During the preschool years, early moral judgments and theory of mind appear to develop as reciprocal, bidirectional processes.
The personal functions of autobiographical memory build on the basic biological functions of memory common to most mammals that, however, do not have the kind of episodic memories that compose human autobiographical memory according to present theory. The thesis here is that personal autobiographical memory is functionally and structurally related to the use of cultural myths and social narratives, and that the relative emphasis put on the self in different cultural and social contexts influences the form and function of autobiographical memory and the need for developing a uniquely personal life narrative in those contexts. Historical and cross-cultural trends revealed in psychological and literary research are invoked to support this thesis.
Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of preventable deaths for children in most industrialized countries. In this article, I consider research on how parents prevent home injuries to children under 6 years and discuss an intervention aimed at improving parents’ home‐safety practices. Parents of young children use three types of home‐safety practices: teaching about safety, modifying the environment, and supervising. Relying predominantly on teaching increases young children's risk of injury, whereas modifying the environment and supervising protect children and predict fewer injuries. Drawing on evidence about factors that motivate parents’ safety practices, an intervention was developed to improve supervision: The Supervising for Home Safety program positively changed parents’ appraisals about injury and supervision practices. Developing evidence‐based injury‐prevention programs is an effective way to address this national public‐health issue.
Guilt serves vital prosocial functions: It motivates transgressors to make amends, thus restoring damaged relationships. Previous developmental research on guilt has not clearly distinguished it from sympathy for a victim or a tendency to repair damage in general. The authors tested 2- and 3-year-old children (N = 62 and 64, respectively) in a 2 × 2 design, varying whether or not a mishap caused harm to someone and whether children themselves caused that mishap. Three-year-olds showed greatest reparative behavior when they had caused the mishap and it caused harm, thus showing a specific effect of guilt. Two-year-olds repaired more whenever harm was caused, no matter by whom, thus showing only an effect of sympathy. Guilt as a distinct motivator of prosocial behavior thus emerges by at least 3 years. © 2016 The Authors. Child Development
Twenty-four parents, mothers or fathers, of 3-5 year old children in a pre-school nursery kept diaries of problematic encounters within the family. Two of these encounters were later presented as 'pretend' stories to that child who made judgments of and emotionally reacted as if he/she were the story actor including giving reasons for complying. Encounters were coded into different domains (moral, social-conventional, prudential, etc.), and children's reactions compared across domains within each pair of encounters. Instead of the standard "right"/"wrong" question, the children were asked why they would/wouldn't commit the transgression again. All children said that they wouldn't do it again, but their reasons were more often congruent or consistent with the nature of prudential than of other kinds of transgressions, especially than moral transgressions. This suggests that while children may know "right from wrong," they do not see it as relevant to their moral behavior.
Origins and Development of Morality
Morality is a central aspect of social life and has been at the core of psychological theories for more than a century. The scientific study of morality poses enduring questions about how individual psychological needs for autonomy and attachment to groups and society can be met while also ensuring the integrity, dignity, and fair treatment of others. Drawing on philosophy, biology, anthropology, and sociology, developmental scientists have addressed these questions by studying the origins and acquisition of morality as well as the sources and nature of change. We provide a brief review of the theories that provided the foundation for research over the past half‐century and then reflect on the controversies and misconceptions that still exist. We review current psychological research on the developmental roots of morality, morality and mental state knowledge, and moral judgments and reasoning. We also examine the various contexts, ranging from the family and peer groups to society, in which moral development occurs. The rich and growing literature on children's moral judgments has demonstrated that children's concepts of harm, resource allocation, fair and equal treatment of others, social inequities, and rights each develop from a very focused and narrow form in early childhood to their application to broader situational and cultural contexts. As they grow older, children become able to weigh and coordinate competing concerns in different contexts as they apply their moral judgments and emotions to social situations. We conclude with implications and directions for research. Throughout the chapter, we demonstrate how the study of morality has shed light on fundamental topics in developmental science, contributed novel methods, and discovered new knowledge about child development.
A common type of transgression in early childhood involves creating inconvenience, for instance by spilling, playing with breakable objects, or otherwise interfering with others’ activities. Despite the prevalence of such pragmatic transgressions, little is known about children's conceptions of norms prohibiting these acts. The present study examined whether 3–5-year-olds (N = 58) see pragmatic norms as distinct from first-order moral (welfare and rights of others), prudential (welfare of agent), and social conventional norms. Children judged all four types of transgressions to be wrong. Justifications for pragmatic transgressions focused on inconvenience to the transgressor, inconvenience to others, or material disorder. Children rated pragmatic and conventional transgressions as less serious than moral and prudential transgressions. Latent Class Analysis provided further support for the conclusion that preschoolers see pragmatic norms as a category distinct from first-order moral, prudential, and social conventional norms.
Injury is the leading cause of death in childhood. Most of these injuries are preventable events. With limited resources, strategies for prevention should target severe injuries and be based on developmental stage. The aim of this study was to characterise mechanisms of severe injuries in children aged 1 to 4 years old.Methods
Retrospective review of trauma registry of two paediatric trauma centres in Quebec between January 1999 and April 2006. The Injury Prevention Priority Score (IPPS) and Injury Severity Score (ISS) assigned a priority rank to mechanisms of severe injuries based on frequency and on severity.ResultsA total of 640 children 1 to 4 years old with severe injury were identified. Glasgow coma score (GCS) was 7 or less in 33 patients (5%) and mean length of stay was 6.4 days. There were 15 deaths (2.3%). IPPS identified respectively Fall from height, Motor vehicle injuries, Child abuses, Pedestrians struck by motor vehicle and Cycle injuries as the most important mechanisms. The majority of falls occurred at home, mostly in stairs. Less than 30% of victims of motor vehicle accident were adequately restrained. There were 11 all-terrain vehicle-related injuries as a driver or a passenger even in children less than 4 years of age.Conclusion
This study highlights mechanisms that can be targeted by community prevention programs to fight injuries with the highest mortality and morbidity in 1 to 4 years old children.
Preschool children's social interactions with teachers and peers were observed in the context of moral and prudential events. Twenty groups of children were observed during free play for a total of 164 hours (8 hours per each group). Four types of moral transgressions were observed: physical harm, psychological harm, property loss, and property damage. The majority of the moral transgressions pertained to physical harm and property loss. There were equal frequencies of both moral and prudential physical harm acts; Moral physical harm acts resulted in actual harm; whereas, prudential acts were only potentially harmful. Teachers responded differently to moral and prudential rule violations. Gender differences were noted with regard to instigator, victim teachers' responses, and victims' responses.
Two studies examined preschool teacher and child interactions regarding personal, moral, and social-conventional issues in the classroom and the development of personal concepts in young children. In Study 1, 20 preschool classrooms, 10 with 3-year-olds and 10 with 4-year-olds, were observed to assess children's and teachers' interactions regarding personal, moral, social-conventional, and mixed events. Teachers used more direct messages regarding moral and social-conventional events than personal and mixed events. Teachers offered children choices, but they rarely negotiated personal events with children. Children responded with personal choice assertions when adults offered them choices, but adults did not differ in the frequency that they negated or affirmed children's assertions of personal choice. In Study 2, 120 preschool children, nearly evenly divided between males and females at 3, 4, and 5 years of age, were interviewed regarding their conceptions of personal events in the classroom and home. With age, children judged that they should retain control over personal decisions in both contexts. In both judgments and social interactions, teachers and children identified a personal domain in which children can and should make choices about how to structure their activities and assert their independence in the classroom.
This study examines whether German and Portuguese 5- to 6-, and 8- to 9-year-old children distinguish between the feelings attributed to a victimizer or to themselves if they were the victimizers in two hypothetical moral violations (stealing and breaking a promise), and how they morally evaluate the emotions they attribute to victimizers and the person of the victimizer. The results showed that in spite of some developmental and cultural differences, children's attribution of negative emotions was substantively more frequent when they made attributions to themselves. Furthermore, most children judged the positive (immoral) emotions they had attributed to victimizers as not right and evaluated the person of the hypothetical victimizer negatively. The results clarify contradictory findings in the field and may provide a better understanding of the moral and developmental meaning of the positive and negative emotions attributed in acts of victimization.
This paper presents a general statistical methodology for the analysis of multivariate categorical data arising from observer reliability studies. The procedure essentially involves the construction of functions of the observed proportions which are directed at the extent to which the observers agree among themselves and the construction of test statistics for hypotheses involving these functions. Tests for interobserver bias are presented in terms of first-order marginal homogeneity and measures of interobserver agreement are developed as generalized kappa-type statistics. These procedures are illustrated with a clinical diagnosis example from the epidemiological literature.
Observations and interviews of 20 middle-class 3- and 4-year-olds and their mothers were conducted to examine the emergence of the personal domain. Interviews with children showed that 3- and 4-year-olds make a conceptual distinction between personal, and moral or conventional issues. Interviews with mothers indicated that they viewed it as important for young children to have freedom of choice over personal issues to develop a sense of autonomy and individuality. Observations in the home revealed that mothers tended to give direct social messages to children about moral, conventional, and prudential events, and were more likely to give indirect social messages in the form of offered choices to children in response to personal issues. Mothers were more likely to negotiate with children over personal than other social events. These data revealed a pattern of social interactions concordant with event domain, which included a reciprocal system along the border between the personal and the conventional.
Why do people sometimes seem to know things but fail to act appropriately on the basis of this knowledge? Such dissociations between knowledge and action often occur in infants and children, and in adults following brain damage. These dissociations have supported inferences about the organization of cognitive processes (e.g., separable knowledge and action systems) and their development (e.g., knowledge systems develop before action systems). The current study tested the basis for knowledge-action dissociations in a card-sorting task in which children typically correctly answer questions about sorting rules while sorting cards incorrectly. When questions and sorting measures were more closely equated for the amount of conflict that needed to be resolved for a correct response, children showed no systematic dissociation between knowledge and action. The results challenge standard interpretations of knowledge-action dissociations and support an alternative account based on graded knowledge representations.
In this comprehensive study of the early development of guilt, 106 children were observed in laboratory paradigms in which they were led to believe that they had damaged valuable objects, during two separate sessions at each of the assessments at 22, 33, and 45 months. The behavioral and affective components of guilt cohered significantly across the sessions, converged with each other, were stable across all the assessments, and corresponded modestly with maternal reports. Most components decreased with age, except for bodily tension, which increased. At 33 and 45 months, girls displayed more guilt than did boys. Children who were more fearful in typical fear-inducing paradigms also displayed more guilt. Children of mothers who relied on more power-assertive discipline, observed and self-reported, displayed less guilt. Guilt related positively to the development of self at 18 months and to moral self at 56 months. Children who displayed more guilt were less likely to violate rules of conduct at 56 months. A mediational model was supported: Fearful temperament contributed to guilt proneness, which in turn served to inhibit children's tendency to violate rules.
Sixty-one Chinese preschoolers from Hong Kong at 2 ages (Ms = 4.36 and 6.00 years) were interviewed about familiar moral, social-conventional, and personal events. Children treated personal events as distinct from moral obligations and conventional regulations. Children judged the child as deciding personal issues, based on personal choice justifications, whereas children judged parents as deciding moral and conventional issues. With age, children granted increased decision-making power to the child. In contrast, children viewed moral transgressions as more serious, generalizably wrong, and wrong independent of authority than other events, based on welfare and fairness. Punishment-avoidance justifications for conventional events decreased with age, whereas conventional justifications increased. Young Chinese preschool children make increasingly differentiated judgments about their social world.
Verbal and behavioral measures of children's knowledge are frequently dissociated. These situations represent a largely untapped but important resource for furthering an understanding of human cognition. In this paper, verbal-behavioral dissociations in children are discussed and analyzed, drawing from a wide range of domains. The article explores what might lead to different responses in different modalities, and it is proposed that children's goals may be an important factor. It is concluded that a variety of factors are involved in producing these dissociations, and that a richer picture of development will result from attention to these factors.