Poster #56 - Young children's moral decision to report their close and distant others' moral transgression

• In Event: Poster Session 03

Abstract

A common day-to-day moral dilemma often includes people we love, when our care and loyalty for the loved ones clash with other moral norms such as honesty or concern for justice. Facing this type of moral dilemma, adults were less likely to report their close others than their distant others even after witnessing their severe moral transgressions such as theft or sexual harassment (Soter et al., 2021; Weidman et al., 2020). Would children also show such partiality in their moral decision based on relationship closeness as adults often do? There has been no research to our knowledge that asked children about their own behavioral choices in a moral dilemma, but recent studies on children’s prosocial expectations based on the relationship closeness found that older children, not younger children, expected a parent and a friend more obligated to help a child in need than a stranger, suggesting the interaction effect of age and relationship on children’s prosocial expectations (Marshall et al., 2020, 2021).
We conducted three sets of experiments to examine whether young children’s willingness to report moral transgression would vary by their relationship closeness to the transgressor. In this pre-registered study, 5-to-10-years-olds (n = 310) heard 8 theft stories (4 from their close other, 4 from their distant other) of varying severity (high vs. low) with visual aids, either through video conferencing tool (i.e., Zoom) from their home or at the local park. Close other was defined as children’s best friend (Study 1) or primary caregiver (Study 2 & 3). Distant other was defined as children’s classmate (Study 1) or stranger adult (Study 2 & 3). At the end of each story, children were asked whether they would report the theft they witnessed or not.
Across three studies, we found that children were overall much more likely to report the transgression they watched than adults (i.e., about 70% out of 8 stories). Older children answered they would report less than younger children, showing the age effect. Similarly to adults, children were more likely to protect their close others than their distant others, revealing partiality based on the relationship closeness in their decision to report moral transgression, but this relationship effect did not interact with children’s age, meaning that older and younger children had similar levels of favoritism toward their close other over distant other. Children were willing to report high-severity theft more than low-severity theft. For the distant other, children were likely to report high- and low-severity theft similarly. In contrast, for the close other, children were less likely to report low-severity theft than high-severity theft, revealing the interaction of severity and relationship effect.
Unlike previous studies on a voluntary and benevolent act of helping and sharing that found younger children’s equal expectations from close and distant others (Marshall et al., 2020, 2021), this study found that younger children at age 5 already are willing to make a partial moral decision favoring close others. These findings contribute to our understanding of day-to-day human moral decisions within a relationship context.

Authors

• Yeonjee Bae, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Presenting Author

• Felix Warneken, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Laura Soter, Duke Univeristy

• Susan A Gelman, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Ethan Kross, University of Michigan

• Martha Berg