Arini Rhea L, Bocarejo Aljure Juliana, Bueno Guerra Nereida, Bayón González Clara, Fernández Alba Estrella, Suárez Fernández Natalia, Ingram Gordon P D, Wiggs Luci, Kenward Ben
School of Psychology, Sport Science, and Wellbeing, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK.
Centre for Psychological Research, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2025 Jan 10;78(10):17470218241310829. doi: 10.1177/17470218241310829.
This study investigated how children's punishment affective states change over time, as well as when children begin to prioritise intentions over outcomes in their punishment decisions. Whereas most prior research sampled children from Anglo-America or Northwestern Europe, we tested 5- to 11-year-old children from Colombia and Spain ( = 123). We focused on punishment behaviour in response to ostensibly real moral transgressions, rather than punishment recommendations for hypothetical moral transgressions. We employed moral scenarios involving disloyalty (group-focused moral domain) and unfairness (individual-focused moral domain). Regarding punishment affective states, on average, children did not derive much enjoyment from administering punishment, nor did they anticipate that punishment would feel good. Thus, children did not make the same emotional forecasting error adults commonly commit. Regarding the cognitive integration of outcomes and intentions, children began to punish failed intentional transgressions more harshly than accidental transgression, in both disloyalty and unfairness scenarios, much earlier than in previous behavioural studies: around 7 years of age rather than in late adolescence. This could be due to the lower processing demands and higher intention salience of our paradigm. Exploratory analyses revealed that children showed higher concern for disloyalty than unfairness. Punishment of disloyalty remained relatively stable in severity with increasing age, while punishment of unfairness decreased in severity. This suggests that the relative importance of moral concerns for the individual vs. the group may shift because of culture-directed learning processes.
本研究调查了儿童的惩罚情感状态如何随时间变化，以及儿童在做出惩罚决定时何时开始将意图置于结果之上。以往大多数研究抽取的是英裔美国人或西北欧的儿童作为样本，而我们测试了来自哥伦比亚和西班牙的5至11岁儿童（=123名）。我们关注的是对表面上真实的道德违规行为的惩罚行为，而非针对假设的道德违规行为的惩罚建议。我们采用了涉及不忠（群体导向的道德领域）和不公平（个体导向的道德领域）的道德情境。关于惩罚情感状态，平均而言，儿童在实施惩罚时并没有获得太多乐趣，他们也不认为惩罚会让人感觉良好。因此，儿童没有犯成年人常犯的那种情感预测错误。关于结果与意图的认知整合，在不忠和不公平情境中，儿童开始比意外违规行为更严厉地惩罚故意违规未遂行为的时间，比之前的行为研究要早得多：大约在7岁，而不是在青春期后期。这可能是由于我们的范式对认知加工的要求较低且意图显著性较高。探索性分析表明，儿童对不忠的关注高于不公平。随着年龄增长，对不忠行为的惩罚严厉程度相对稳定，而对不公平行为的惩罚严厉程度则有所下降。这表明，由于文化导向的学习过程，道德关注对个体与群体的相对重要性可能会发生转变。
