Department of Psychology, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Dev Psychol. 2023 May;59(5):918-927. doi: 10.1037/dev0001521. Epub 2023 Feb 27.
Young children from a very early age not only prefer those who help others but also those who engage in altruistic helping. This study aims to test how children assess helping when the goal of the helping behavior is immoral. We argue that younger children consider only the helping versus hindering behavior, but older children distinguish their judgments depending on the goal to which the helping leads. In the study involving 727 European children aged 2-7 years (354 girls, = 53.82 months, = 18.76), we found that children aged 2-4 years assessed helping as always morally good and hindering as morally bad, no matter the recipient's intention. Only children aged 4.5-7 years assessed helping in an immoral act as immoral and hindering in an immoral act as moral. We also found that younger children liked the helper regardless of the goal that their helping behavior led to, but from the age of 5, children preferred characters who hindered in an immoral act rather than those who helped. Our study extends the previous research, showing how children's moral judgments of helping behavior develop and become more complex as children get older. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
从很小的时候起，幼儿不仅喜欢帮助他人的人，也喜欢利他主义的帮助者。本研究旨在测试当帮助行为的目的不道德时，儿童如何评估帮助。我们认为，年幼的孩子只考虑帮助与阻碍行为，但年龄较大的孩子会根据帮助所导致的目标来区分他们的判断。在涉及 727 名 2-7 岁欧洲儿童（354 名女孩， = 53.82 个月， = 18.76）的研究中，我们发现，2-4 岁的儿童无论接受者的意图如何，都将帮助视为道德上永远是好的，阻碍视为道德上是坏的。只有 4.5-7 岁的儿童才会将不道德行为中的帮助视为不道德，将不道德行为中的阻碍视为道德。我们还发现，年幼的孩子无论帮助行为的目标是什么，都喜欢帮助者，但从 5 岁开始，孩子更喜欢在不道德行为中阻碍的角色，而不是帮助的角色。我们的研究扩展了以前的研究，表明儿童对帮助行为的道德判断如何随着年龄的增长而发展并变得更加复杂。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2023 APA，保留所有权利）。
