Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
Br J Dev Psychol. 2023 Sep;41(3):276-290. doi: 10.1111/bjdp.12447. Epub 2023 Mar 22.
This study examined how children's attentional orientation towards environmental cues, dispositional sympathy and inhibitory control were associated with their ethical guilt. Participants were 4- and 6-year-old children (N = 211; 55% male) from ethnically diverse backgrounds. To assess ethical guilt, children were presented with two vignettes depicting ethical violations and reported how they would feel and why, if they had committed those transgressions. Using eye tracking, we calculated attentional orientation as the percentage of time children attended to other-oriented (i.e., victim) minus self-serving (i.e., object gained by transgressing) cues during these vignettes. Children also reported on their sympathy and completed an observational measure of inhibitory control. Although main effects were not significant, sympathy moderated the link between attentional orientation and ethical guilt: attentional orientation was positively associated with ethical guilt for children with low levels of sympathy but had no effect among those high in sympathy. These findings suggest that practices centred on prompting children to attend to other-oriented cues - and away from self-serving ones - may be effective particularly for children who are generally less sympathetic.
本研究考察了儿童对环境线索的注意力倾向、性格同情和抑制控制如何与他们的道德内疚感相关。参与者是来自不同种族背景的 4 岁和 6 岁儿童（N=211；55%为男性）。为了评估道德内疚感，向儿童呈现了两个描述道德违规的情景，并让他们报告如果自己犯了这些错误会有什么感觉以及为什么会有这种感觉。我们使用眼动追踪技术计算了注意力倾向，即儿童在这些情景中关注他人导向（即受害者）减去自我服务（即通过违规获得的物体）线索的时间百分比。儿童还报告了他们的同情心，并完成了抑制控制的观察性测量。尽管主要影响不显著，但同情心调节了注意力倾向与道德内疚感之间的联系：对于同情心水平较低的儿童，注意力倾向与道德内疚感呈正相关，但在同情心水平较高的儿童中则没有影响。这些发现表明，以促使儿童关注他人导向的线索为中心的做法——远离自我服务的线索——可能对一般来说同情心较低的儿童特别有效。
