School of Psychology, University of East Anglia.
Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia.
Dev Psychol. 2017 Oct;53(10):1895-1911. doi: 10.1037/dev0000380. Epub 2017 Jul 31.
Two experiments were conducted to investigate the influences on 4-8 year-olds' and adults' moral judgments. In both, participants were told stories from previous studies that had indicated that children's judgments are largely outcome-based. Building on recent research in which one change to these studies' methods resulted in substantially more intention-based judgment, in Experiment 1 (N = 75) the salience and recency of intention information were increased, and in Experiment 2 (N = 99) carefulness information (i.e., the absence of negligence) was also added. In both experiments even the youngest children's judgments were primarily intention-based, and in Experiment 2 punishment judgments were similar to adults' from 5-6 years. Comparisons of data across studies and experiments indicated that both changes increased the proportion of intention-based punishment judgments-but not acceptability judgments-across age-groups. These findings challenge and help to explain those of much previous research, according to which children's judgments are primarily outcome-based. However, younger participants continued to judge according to outcome more than older participants. This might indicate that young children are more influenced by outcomes than are adults, but other possible explanations are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record
两项实验旨在探究对 4-8 岁儿童和成年人道德判断的影响。在这两项实验中，参与者都被讲述了之前研究的故事，这些研究表明儿童的判断主要基于结果。基于最近的研究，这些研究方法的一个改变导致了更多基于意图的判断，在实验 1（N=75）中，增加了意图信息的突出性和新近性，在实验 2（N=99）中，还增加了谨慎信息（即没有疏忽）。在这两项实验中，即使是最小的儿童的判断也主要是基于意图的，并且在实验 2 中，惩罚判断与 5-6 岁儿童的成年人判断相似。对跨研究和实验的数据进行比较表明，这两个变化都增加了各年龄组基于意图的惩罚判断的比例，但不包括可接受性判断。这些发现挑战并有助于解释之前许多研究的结果，根据这些研究，儿童的判断主要基于结果。然而，年轻的参与者比年长的参与者更倾向于根据结果进行判断。这可能表明，年幼的儿童比成年人更容易受到结果的影响，但也讨论了其他可能的解释。
