Poster #125 - Cultural similarities and differences in the development of sociomoral reasoning: An eye-tracking study

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

Since Piaget’s (1932) seminal work, the shift from outcome-based to intent-based moral judgment has been one of the central issues in the literature investigating the development of moral judgment. Evidence has suggested that when intentions and outcomes conflict with each other (e.g., hitting causes pleasure), children younger than 5 years of age are likely to use outcome information when making moral judgments, and as children develop, their moral judgment will shift to an intent-based one (e.g., Miller & McCann, 1979; Wellman, Larkey, & Somerville, 1979; Westra & Carruthers, 2017). However, two questions remain unanswered: (1) Is sensitivity to the outcome reflected in attention to the agents and the recipients? and (2) Are there cultural variations in the development of sociomoral understanding? This study explored cultural similarities and differences in the development of sociomoral evaluation by comparing the attention and verbal sociomoral evaluation of Japanese and European American young children.
Three- and 4-year-olds from Japan and the United States (N=141) were shown six stories which varied in behavior (positive or negative) and outcome (recipient’s reaction: happy, neutral, or sad) on the computer screen. Each story consisted of four vignettes accompanied by the storytelling of pre-recorded female voice. For example, in one story, a bear helped to open a box for an elephant, and the elephant’s facial expression was either happy, neutral, or sad. As the children watched the story, their looking behaviors were measured using an eye-tracker. After seeing each story, the children were asked to evaluate the agent’s sociomoral trait (1: very mean – 5: very kind).
The results showed that Japanese and European American children showed similar tendencies in their sensitivity to the outcome: They paid more attention to the agent when behavior and outcome were congruent (e.g., positive behavior–happy reaction), and paid more attention to the recipient when behavior and outcome were incongruent (e.g., positive behavior–sad reaction). In the children’s verbal evaluation of the agents, however, sensitivity to the outcome was shown only in their evaluation of negative behaviors: Both cultural groups evaluated the antisocial agents more positively when the recipient’s reaction was happy than when the reaction was neutral or sad. Cultural difference was found only in the development of the verbal evaluation: The ability to evaluate agents based on the valence of behavior (i.e., positive vs. negative) was shown among both the 3- and 4-year-old European Americans, while it was shown among only the four-year-old Japanese children. These results indicate three things: First, children are sensitive to the relation between an agent’s behavior and a recipient’s reaction from 3 years of age at the latest. Second, children’s sensitivity to outcome, as expressed in verbal evaluation, is reflected only in the evaluation of negative behavior. Third, while sensitivity to outcome is similar between European American and Japanese young children, the ability to evaluate agents verbally, based on an observation of agents’ behaviors, develops earlier among the European American children than among the Japanese. Both the universal and the culture-specific aspects of sociomoral development will be discussed.

Authors

• Yuki Shimizu, Saitama University
  Presenting Author

• Sawa Senzaki, University of Wisconsin -Green Bay
  Non-Presenting Author