Poster #101 - Colombian Children’s and Adults’ Expectations and Moral Judgments of Environmental Transgressions

• In Event: Poster Session 08

Abstract

Although the current environmental crisis is affecting the entire world, it is disproportionally impacting the global south communities and especially the younger generations (Gonzalez & Atapattu, 2016). Given that children in those communities grow up surrounded by pollution and other environmental issues, they are starting to perceive those environmental conditions as the norm (i.e., environmental generational amnesia, Kahn, 2002). For instance, Colombian children in an impoverished community tended to show the expectation that a business person would dispose of industrial waste into a river or that a Mayor would damage a riverbed to build a road (Pizza & Posada, 2020). However, there is scarce research directly exploring whether children and adults will have similar expectations about peers in daily life situations, as well as whether those expectations make children and adults perceive harm to nature as more permissible.

To address this gap, in this study, Colombian third (N = 32) and seventh graders (N = 32), and undergraduate students (N = 32) were presented with two situations in which the main character of a hypothetical story had the option of either engaging in an environmental transgression or preventing it. First, participants were asked to predict what the character would do, and we coded whether they expected a transgression. Participants were then told that the transgression had been committed and asked to judge the severity of the transgression (1 to 5). One of the transgressions was animal mistreatment, and the other was energy waste. Additionally, participants were asked to report their nature-related activities in the last year, whether their family engaged in harmful and conservation actions towards nature, and how often they talk with family and friends about environmental issues.

In contrast to prior research, fewer participants expected the story's character to engage in animal mistreatment (39%) and energy waste (32%). However, contextual and age differences were found. A greater likelihood of expecting energy waste was shown by participants who reported family engagement in harmful actions towards nature across grades (p = .03) and by undergraduates compared to third graders (p = .04). No other factors predicted participants' expectations. Most importantly, we found that third graders and undergraduates who expected the transgression of animal mistreatment judged the situation as less severe than those without that expectation (ps < .05). Additionally, undergraduates rated energy waste with less severity than seventh and third graders (ps < .05).

In sum, although most of the sample did not expect others to harm nature, that expectation was greater for older participants and those exposed to actions that damage nature at home. Additionally, we found evidence that those expectations decrease the severity attributed to transgressions across different ages and that adults generally show more acceptance of the transgressions. These findings not only make visible additional consequences of environmental injustice among children and adults but also call for the design of education programs that approach the tension between what one is likely to do and what one ought to do in those contexts.

Authors

• Lizette Pizza, Boston University
  Presenting Author

• Roberto Posada, Universidad Nacional de Colombia