Poster #81 - Counterfactual thinking and moral judgements in children

• In Event: Poster Session 09

Abstract

When making moral judgements, adults often think counterfactually about what a perpetrator could have chosen to do differently. Considering the choices someone had available to them is often integral to making judgements of their subsequent behavior. In children however, the ability for counterfactual thinking shows a protracted development, with some studies only finding evidence from the age of 6. I will discuss work exploring how this might affect children’s emerging moral judgements. Across two studies (N = 234) children were asked to make judgments of characters who either 1) had a choice and chose to do the right thing; 2) had a choice and chose to do the wrong thing; 3) had no choice but to do the right thing; and 4) had no choice but to do the wrong thing.
Across both studies, children were asked to rate how nice or mean each character was behaving. Results revealed that 8- to 9-year-olds judged characters with a choice who did the right thing as nicer than those who had no choice but to do the right thing. Similarly, 8- to 9-year-old children judged characters with a choice who did the wrong thing as meaner than those who had no choice but to do the wrong thing (see Figure 1). 6- to 7- year-olds showed some evidence of this general pattern as well. However, in contrast, 4- and 5-year-olds made judgements solely on the outcome, irrespective of choice. That is, they judged the characters as equally nice or mean based only on whether they did the right or wrong thing respectively, without considering whether they had a choice or not. This work suggests that it is only from the age of 6 that children consider a character’s choices when judging their actions. This finding highlights the important role of counterfactual thinking in children’s moral judgements and raises many additional questions regarding other areas of children’s social cognition. That is, being able to understand the choices someone has is often essential when understanding behavior. I will discuss ongoing work on such questions, specifically work which investigates how counterfactual thinking influences children’s punishment and reward decisions, and if children’s judgments differ depending on whether a character physically couldn’t have done differently compared with one who couldn’t have known any differently.

Author

• Shalini Gautam, Boston College
  Presenting Author