Van de Vondervoort Julia W, Hamlin J Kiley
Centre for Infant Cognition, Department of Psychology, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Front Psychol. 2018 Oct 2;9:1851. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01851. eCollection 2018.
Many studies suggest that preschoolers initially privilege outcome over intention in their moral judgments. The present findings reveal that, in contrast, even younger preschoolers can privilege intentions when evaluating characters who successfully or unsuccessfully help or hinder a third party in achieving its goal. Following a live-action puppet show originally created for infant populations, children made a forced-choice social judgment (which puppet was liked) and two forced-choice moral judgments (which puppet was nicer, which puppet should be punished), and were asked to explain their punishment allocations. In two experiments ( = 195), 3- and 4-year-olds evaluated characters with distinct intentions to help or to hinder who were associated with either positive or negative outcomes. Both ages judged characters with more positive intentions as nicer, and allocated punishment to characters with more negative intentions; neither of these tendencies depended on the outcomes the characters were associated with. Three-year-olds' responses were somewhat less consistent than were 4-year-olds', in that 3-year-olds' judgments were disrupted by ambiguous harmful intent. Notably, children's social judgments were less consistent than their moral judgments. In a third and final experiment ( = 100), children evaluated characters with the same intention but who were associated with different outcomes. Children showed inconsistent responding across age and outcome valence, but only 4-year-olds evaluating two characters with positive intentions reliably responded based on outcome. When providing informative responses in all three studies, children most frequently explained their punishment allocations by appealing to the puppet's (attempted) hindering action or failure to help. These findings raise questions as to what underlies different patterns of response across studies in the literature, and suggests that observing live interactions may facilitate young children's intention-based moral judgments.
许多研究表明，学龄前儿童在道德判断中最初更看重结果而非意图。相比之下，目前的研究结果显示，即使是更小的学龄前儿童在评价成功或未成功帮助或阻碍第三方实现目标的角色时，也能更看重意图。在一场最初为婴儿群体创作的真人木偶剧之后，孩子们进行了一项强制选择的社会判断（喜欢哪个木偶）和两项强制选择的道德判断（哪个木偶更友善，哪个木偶应该受到惩罚），并被要求解释他们的惩罚分配。在两项实验（N = 195）中，3岁和4岁的儿童评价了具有不同帮助或阻碍意图且与正面或负面结果相关联的角色。两个年龄段的儿童都认为意图更积极的角色更友善，并将惩罚分配给意图更消极的角色；这些倾向都不取决于角色所关联的结果。3岁儿童的反应比4岁儿童的反应略显不一致，因为3岁儿童的判断会受到模糊有害意图的干扰。值得注意的是，儿童的社会判断比他们的道德判断更不一致。在第三个也是最后一个实验（N = 100）中，儿童评价了意图相同但与不同结果相关联的角色。儿童在年龄和结果效价方面的反应不一致，但只有4岁儿童在评价两个意图积极的角色时可靠地根据结果做出了反应。在所有三项研究中提供信息性回答时，儿童最常通过诉诸木偶的（试图）阻碍行为或未能提供帮助来解释他们的惩罚分配。这些发现引发了关于文献中不同研究反应模式背后原因的问题，并表明观察现场互动可能有助于幼儿基于意图的道德判断。
