Childhood Roots of “Being Green”: Moral Judgments of Environmental Actions in Children and Adults

• In Event: Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Topic - Moral Development

Abstract

A new, youth-led environmental movement has shifted public discourse on climate at a global scale. Research suggests that moral intuitions about environmental harm emerge by preschool age (Hahn & Garrett, 2017), and that older children engage in complex reasoning about environmental harm (Kahn & Lourenço, 2002). Yet, little is known about (a) how young children view pro-environmental actions, (b) how children’s judgments change with age and compare to adults, (c) whether early intuitions about environmental actions are similar to intuitions about other moral actions, and (d) whether children’s environmental moral judgments are meaningfully related to their environmental behavior. In two studies, we examined 3- to 10-year-old children’s (N=45) and adults’ (N=555) judgments about environmental and other moral behaviors.
Children and adults viewed two sets of stories (order counterbalanced between and within sets): (1) stories depicting a character performing pro-environmental actions and another character performing environmentally harmful actions; and (2) stories depicting a different character performing prosocial behaviors and another performing antisocial behaviors. They rated each action on a 9-point pictorial scale. After each set of stories, participants indicated their preference to befriend either the helpful or harmful character. Additionally, children were presented with two possible toy cars: a faster but more polluting car or a slower but cleaner car. Adults completed a similar trade-off task on the computer (Pro-Environmental Behavior Task; Lange et al., 2018), in which, over multiple trials, participants choose to spend less time on the task by taking a car that emits a specified amount of CO2 vs. spend longer on the task by taking a bike that emits no CO2.
Replicating previous work (e.g., Hahn & Garrett, 2017), even preschool-age children judged environmental harm as negative, and ratings of harm became stronger with age, mirroring their judgments of antisocial behavior (Table 1). Extending prior work, younger children also judged pro-environmental behavior as positive, and ratings remained stable with age, similar to their judgments of prosocial behavior (Table 1). Older children and adults, but not preschoolers, showed a preference to befriend the pro-environmental actor, whereas all ages preferred the prosocial character (Figure 1). Preferences for prosocial friends were significantly correlated with moral judgments of prosocial behavior, r=.45, p=.003, but not antisocial behavior, p=.391, whereas preferences for pro-environmental friends were unrelated to moral judgments, ps>.05.
Children’s choice to drive the eco-friendly car (62%) was significantly related to more positive judgments of others’ pro-environmental behavior, r=.32, p=.031, but not to negative judgments of environmental harm, r=-.24, p=.118. Among adults, lower CO2 emissions on the PEBT were significantly related to more positive judgments of others’ pro-environmental behavior, r=.08, p=.050, and to more negative judgments of environmentally harmful behavior, r=.19, p<.001.
Together, our findings suggest that children develop moral intuitions about both environmentally helpful and harmful actions as early as preschool, and that these intuitions develop alongside moral intuitions regarding prosocial and antisocial behaviors. Moreover, children’s judgments of pro-environmental behaviors specifically were meaningfully related to their own pro-environmental behavior. Implications for nurturing children’s emerging environmental awareness will be discussed.

Authors

• Jessica A Stern, University of Virginia - Charlottesville
  Presenting Author

• Meltem Yucel, Duke University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tobias Grossmann, University of Virginia - Charlottesville
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amrisha Vaish, University of Virginia - Charlottesville
  Non-Presenting Author