Poster #11 - Exploration of the Moral Domain in Fantasy Play

• In Event: Poster Session 15

Abstract

Imaginative play might afford exploration of the moral domain, as young children engage in narratives of prosocial/antisocial behavior and its outcomes, discuss the rules/norms of behavior, and attend to others’ ideas and feelings in pretense (Dunn, 2014; Howes, 2009). However, imaginative play varies in form, including embodiment of roles in pretend play (PP) and interaction with imaginary companions (ICs; Harris, 2000). Both forms afford enacting moral roles or discussion of moral dilemmas, but neither the prevalence of these activities nor their relation to form have been explored. We investigated moral elements in children’s PP and IC play, hypothesizing that a) first-person role-taking in PP would elicit embodiment of moral struggles (e.g., good vs. evil) more frequently than IC play and b) ICs, providing a third-person perspective, would afford verbal processing of moral issues more than PP. We also qualitatively explored co-occurrence of moral elements in children’s pretense.

Parents of 71 preschool children (mean age = 51.61 months; range = 38-69 months) kept daily diaries of their children’s IC interactions and PP episodes for approximately two weeks. Forty described children’s interactions with ICs (25 girls, 15 boys), 22 described PP (11 girls, 11 boys), and 9 included both ICs and PP (7 girls, 2 boys), generating 589 episodes. Each was first coded (yes/no) as including morality as a theme (Gwet’s AC = .92), and an iterative process generated 7 moral elements that were then coded present/absent within each episode (Gwet’s ACs >.73).

Of the 589 episodes, 53 (8.9%) included one or more moral elements, such as moral struggles between good/evil, discussion of moral behavior/rules, application of just consequences, and prosocial/antisocial acts (see Table 1). Comparison of elements by play form indicated that, as hypothesized, a higher proportion of PP (61.1%) than IC (11.4%) episodes involved moral struggle, 𝛘2(1, N = 53) = 12.12, p < .001, and marginally more IC (57.1%) than PP (33.3%) episodes included discussion of rules, 𝛘2(1, N = 53) = 2.70, p < .101. Two patterns of positive correlations emerged among moral elements within episodes (see Table 2): 1) moral behavior in play was likely to be prosocial, and 2) just consequences, moral struggle, and antisocial behavior co-occurred.

We concluded that morality exploration is not a central function of fantasy play, although the psychological distance provided by such play (White et al., 2017) might have enabled children’s adoption of a moral authority’s perspective. Specifically, qualitative analysis showed that in PP, children embodied the “good” (i.e., authority) role in moral struggles against imaginary others, and children also acted as authorities in reinforcing social conventions and moral rules with ICs. However, the developmental affordances of PP and IC play might vary. As first-person pretense, PP moral struggles included good/evil tropes imitative of cultural narratives. Teaching naïve ICs, however, was arguably more cognitively complex as it required a third-person perspective and included articulation of internalized moral messages (Chang-Kredl & Howe, 2010; VanReet, 2017).

Authors

• Eleanor Antezana, Wellesley College
  Presenting Author

• Marcella Stones, Wellesley College

• Tracy Gleason, Wellesley College