Poster #129 - To Get Belongings Back or To Punish the Transgressor: How Preschoolers Evaluate Restoration and Retaliation

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

Prior studies have explored children's responses to aggressive conflict situations. However, less is known about how children think about retaliation of immoral behavior when they are bystanders. Do preschoolers prefer the victim who punishes the theft (retaliation), or the victim who restores the property to the original state (restoration)? How do preschoolers’ third-party evaluations relate to their own behavior when facing property loss?
In the present study, we adopted a single variance within-group research design. First, participants watched two video clips. The story in video clips was that two puppets had 2 blocks respectively at the beginning, and one puppet (the troublemaker) stole one block from the victim. In the two different video clips, the victim either chose to retaliate the troublemaker (the retaliator), or to take the block back (the restorator). The difference among three experiments is the degree of the punishment. In experiment 1, the retaliator retaliated the troublemaker by making the troublemaker lose 3 blocks. In experiment 2, the retaliator made the troublemaker lose 2 blocks. In experiment 3, the retaliator made the troublemaker lose only 1 block. Then the experimenter asked participants’ attitude toward the retaliator and the restorator, including the behavior evaluation (“is their behavior good or bad”) and preference (“do you like them or not”) to both puppets. Finally, the experimenter tested the child’s own behavior in such a situation. In order to straightly compare children’s attitude toward retaliators in different degrees of punishment, we designed experiment 4. Here the degree of the punishment (making the troublemaker lose 1/2/3 blocks) is the independent variable. There are 184 preschool children participated in our research.
Results revealed that as a third-party, preschoolers judged restoration to be better than retaliation; such a tendency was especially significant in preschoolers who chose to restore when their own property was stolen. Moreover, among different degrees of retaliation to the transgressor, they preferred the slight retaliation (“steal one, punish one or two”) rather than the harsh retaliation (“steal one, punish three”). However, the preferences were different when children were recipients of the property loss: more children chose the harsh punishment than the slight punishment. These findings suggest that as a third-party, preschoolers prefer compensation to the victim more often than retaliation toward the transgressor; as a second-party victim however, their punitive impulse increases.
Keywords: moral evaluation, ownership violation, punishment, retributive justice, restorative justice

Authors

• Xin Liu, Tsinghua University
  Presenting Author

• Zhen Wu, Tsinghua University
  Non-Presenting Author