Poster #122 - Children’s Developing Understanding of the Moral Virtue of Self-control

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

Children constantly face the tension between individual wishes and social or moral obligations. As children increasingly experience self-control conflicts, children may gradually recognize the moral virtue of overcoming a self-interested desire in order to follow social or moral obligations. Consistent with this idea, previous studies have shown substantial development during early and middle childhood in beliefs about one’s ability to inhibit desires (Kushnir et al., 2015), in attributing positive emotions to exercising willpower (e.g., Lagattuta, 2008), and in believing that one would overcome immediate desires and act towards higher-older goals (Yang & Fyre, 2018). However, a recent study (Starmans & Bloom, 2016) suggests that children do not recognize the moral virtue of resolving inner conflicts between a stated self-interested desire and a stated moral desire until after age 8. Here we examine one interpretation of this prior finding, namely that children were confused when hearing about two explicitly conflicting desires. We presented children with stories (adapted from Starmans & Bloom, 2016) in which two characters ultimately behaved morally, but one character overcame a self-interested desire in order to behave morally, whereas the other character had no self-interested desire. Here we left the desire to be moral unstated. Thus, we were able to present the dilemma while avoiding the explicit mention of conflicting desires.

Seventy-six children (Age: 4 – 7) and 32 adults in the U.S. were presented with four stories as described above. We asked children to compare the two characters by asking “Which of the two characters would you give a prize to?”, and “Which one do you think is nicer?” Preliminary results show that adults significantly favor the conflicted character who behaved morally despite self-interested desires, t(31) = -13.38, p < .001. Among children, 4 to 5-year-olds significantly favor the unconflicted character who had no self-interested desire (t(38) = 5.43, p < .001), while 6 to 7-year-olds are neutral in their evaluation of the two characters (p > .05). An independent samples t-test revealed that 6 to 7-year-olds were significantly more likely to favor the conflicted character than 4 to 5-year-olds (t(74) = 2.37, p = .021) (See Figure 1). Thus, our findings reveal a developmental change in which children increasingly recognize the moral virtue of overcoming a self-interested desire in order to behave morally.

However, unlike adults, 6- and 7-year-olds in our study did not necessarily infer an inner conflict between a moral desire and a self-interested desire. When asked to infer the characters’ desires to behave morally on a 0-2 scale, adults inferred that both characters wanted to behave morally, while children inferred that only the unconflicted character who did not have a self-interested desire wanted to behave morally (See Figure 2). This raises questions about the process by which children make inferences about moral virtue and how it differs from adult reasoning. We suggest that children consider the costliness of actions rather than the conflict between mental states when making moral judgments. We are currently examining this possibility in an ongoing study.

Authors

• Xin (Alice) Zhao, Cornell University
  Presenting Author

• Tamar Kushnir, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Author