Children’s and Adults’ Attributions of Moral Judgments to Humans and God

• In Event: Reasoning about Religious Norms Across the Lifespan: Applications, Violations, and Alterations

Abstract

Children and adults judge intentional harms to be worse than accidental harms (Woodward, 2011). However, the extent to which they expect others to do so is unclear. On the one hand, young children are sometimes egocentric (Surtees & Apperly, 2012) and may therefore conclude that all agents are like them. On the other hand, children readily learn from others (Harris et al., 2018) and sometimes receive testimony concerning differences between their own minds and others' minds. This is particularly the case in a religious context, where "theologically correct" teachings posit that God's mind is quite different from a person's mind (Barrett, 1999). Therefore, children may report that God's views differ from those held by humans.

We presented 43 4- to 5-year-olds, 31 6- to 7-year-olds, and 84 adults from the United States with stories describing accidental or intentional harms. After each story, participants indicated how much trouble the offender should be in (scale: 0=no trouble to 3=a lot of trouble). Participants completed this rating three times, each time taking the perspective of a different agent: themselves, another person named Pat, or God. On all trials where participants provided a rating of 1 or higher, indicating at least some trouble, the experimenter asked what kind of punishment the agent would provide.

We analyzed severity of harm judgments using an Age Group x Harm x Agent ANOVA and discovered a three-way interaction, p=.005 (Fig. 1). Participants in all age groups expected all agents to judge intentional harms as worse than accidental harms (ps<.001), suggesting that children expect others to share their harsh judgments of intentional harms. When judging each type of harm, children did not distinguish among agents (ps≥.068). Unlike children, adults expected God to judge both intentional and accidental harms less severely than either Pat or themselves (ps<.01). Adults also expected Pat to judge intentional harms (p=.005), but not accidental harms (p=.049; non-significant after Bonferroni correction), less severely than themselves.

Responses to open-ended questions regarding the types punishment each agent would deliver supported and extended these findings (Fig. 2). We coded each response based on whether participants suggested verbal (e.g., telling transgressors to apologize), physical (e.g., requiring transgressors to fix what they had broken), and/or emotional (e.g., forgiving transgressors) responses. Consistent with the harm severity judgments, children did not think that the agents would react differently when the harm was accidental (ps≥.075) or intentional (ps≥.026; non-significant after Bonferroni correction). Adults, on the other hand, attributed more emotional responses than the expected value to God for both accidental (p<.001) and intentional (p≤.001) harm, whereas they attributed fewer emotional responses than the expected value to themselves and Pat for intentional harm (ps<.001), but not for accidental harm (ps≥.036, non-significant after Bonferroni correction).

These findings indicate important differences in moral attributions to different agents across development. While adults expected God to respond mercifully, children expected God and humans to hold similar moral judgments. The perception that God is benevolent may depend on individuals' increasing ability to distinguish different minds from each other across development.

Authors

• Ayse Payir, Boston University
  Presenting Author

• Larisa Heiphetz Solomon, Columbia University
  Non-Presenting Author