Poster #124 - Authority Inaction Affects Children’s Relational Aggression: An Experimental Study of Socio-Moral Decision-Making

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

Research on children’s moral reasoning consistently demonstrates that young children recognize immoral acts to be wrong, even if condoned by authority (Smetana, 1995; Tisak, 1995); however, there is reason to wonder if a victim’s social status may impact this recognition. Situations involving multiple domains (e.g., moral and conventional) require children to weigh both concerns and determine which is more salient, which can put a strain on nascent socio-cognitive faculties (Killen et al., 2011). Under such circumstances, children rely on cues from authority to determine appropriate responses (Smetana, 2006). Importantly, research suggests that when victims of relational aggression are outgroup members, children may look to adults for guidance on how to treat them (Dodge et al., 2007). In the current study, we sought to extend these findings by considering children’s moral reasoning when confronted with tacit authority approval of an immoral act perpetrated against an immigrant peer.
In the current randomized controlled trial, all children (N=25, Mage=60.96 months, SD=9.43) completed four tasks of Theory of Mind (ToM; Wellman & Liu, 2004) and one executive function task (EF; Gerdstadt et al., 1994). The primary assessment was a semi-structured story interview adapted from Killen and colleagues (2011). In our adaptation, the characters were young aliens from different planets; when one alien’s planet becomes uninhabitable, it immigrates to the other alien child’s planet. Participants were asked to decide what a native alien, assigned to clean up the classroom, would do with the immigrant alien’s lunch that had been left behind. To help determine the effect of a teacher’s behavior on the participants’ decision, participants were randomly assigned to either the experimental condition, in which the teacher had previously ignored a socially aggressive act (teasing) against the immigrant alien; or the control condition, in which the teacher had intervened on behalf of the immigrant peer. All children were interviewed once, for approximately 20 minutes, in a quiet space in their schools by a trained researcher.
As expected, there was a significant association between the teacher’s behavior in the experimental task and participants’ prediction about whether the native alien would make a prosocial or tacitly aggressive decision, Fisher’s exact test (2-sided) p=.039 (see Table 1). All children in the experimental condition (that is, participants who were told that the teacher ignored the native characters’ teasing) chose to dispose of the immigrant character’s lunch, compared to only 62% of children who were told that the teacher intervened in the teasing. These findings suggest that tacit authority approval of relationally aggressive acts, in addition to cues from peers, may facilitate less moral responses. Findings pertaining to contributions of ToM and EF will be presented, as well as findings on relating to the justifications for moral responses. We will additionally present the findings from a follow-up study.

Authors

• Joanna Weaver, SUNY-Albany
  Presenting Author

• Erin Ruth Baker, SUNY-Albany
  Non-Presenting Author