Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, ON, Canada.
Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia Pavia, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2014 May 23;5:458. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00458. eCollection 2014.
This study investigated the role of moral reasoning and moral emotions (i.e., sympathy and guilt) in the development of young children's donating behavior (N = 160 4- and 8-year-old children). Donating was measured through children's allocation of resources (i.e., stickers) to needy peers and was framed as a donation to "World Vision." Children's sympathy was measured with both self- and primary caregiver-reports and participants reported their anticipation of guilt feelings following actions that violated prosocial moral norms, specifically the failure to help or share. Participants also provided justifications for their anticipated emotions, which were coded as representing moral or non-moral reasoning processes. Children's moral reasoning emerged as a significant predictor of donating behavior. In addition, results demonstrated significant developmental and gender effects, with 8-year-olds donating significantly more than 4-year-olds and 4-year-old girls making higher value donations than boys of the same age. We discuss donation behaviors within the broader context of giving and highlight the moral developmental antecedents of giving behaviors in childhood.
本研究调查了道德推理和道德情感（即同情和内疚）在儿童捐赠行为发展中的作用（N = 160 名 4 岁和 8 岁儿童）。捐赠行为通过儿童向贫困同龄人的资源分配（即贴纸）来衡量，并被框定为对“世界宣明会”的捐赠。儿童的同情心通过自我和主要照顾者的报告来衡量，参与者报告了他们在违反亲社会道德规范的行为（即未能帮助或分享）后预期的内疚感。参与者还为预期的情绪提供了理由，这些理由被编码为代表道德或非道德推理过程。儿童的道德推理是捐赠行为的一个重要预测因素。此外，研究结果还显示出显著的发展和性别影响，8 岁儿童的捐赠明显多于 4 岁儿童，而同龄的 4 岁女孩的捐赠价值高于男孩。我们在更广泛的给予背景下讨论捐赠行为，并强调儿童时期给予行为的道德发展前因。
