Reasoning About Responsibility: Situational Features and Prior Family Experiences Predict Prosocial Judgments in Emerging Adults

• In Event: Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Topic - Moral Development

Abstract

Household chores are central, yet contested, tasks in the lives of children and their families. When an adolescent refuses to help cook or clean, they may place additional burdens on others, incite conflict, or miss out on opportunities to learn valuable household skills. Judgments and decisions about when to help at home likely incorporate these experiences with helping, as well as situational features (e.g., interests and responsibilities of people involved). Prior research has documented that people are more likely to judge helping as obligatory when the recipient’s need for help is high (e.g., life-threatening emergency), rather than low, and when the helper and the recipient are family members (Killen & Turiel, 1998; Miller et al., 1990). Moreover, cultural groups differ in the involvement of children and adolescents in chores (e.g., Alcalá et al., 2014; Ochs & Izquirdo, 2009). Even within the U.S., adolescents with Asian, Latin American, and European backgrounds differentially reported how often they should help with household tasks (Fuligni et al., 1999). Still, limited research has examined judgments about when and why people ought to help at home. The present research sampled from culturally diverse students to examine situational and cultural contributors to emerging adults’ judgments about helping with everyday household tasks.
In two studies, emerging adults reported about past experiences with helping at home and responded to vignettes about hypothetical everyday situations in which a protagonist had an opportunity to help their mother around mealtime at home. In Study 1 (N=260), participants were less likely to judge that the protagonist should help when the recipient had no need, when there was no general expectation to help, and when the protagonist did not enjoy the task, p<.001. Justifications for judgments primarily included mentions of others (57%), others’ welfare (26%), and the protagonist’s own interest (21%). Participants who reported helping more at home were more likely to judge that the protagonist should help, p=.001, and Latinx participants reported having helped at home more than other ethnic groups p <.001. Study 2 (N=150) replicated these findings. Moreover, unlike in study 1, there was a significant effect of ethnicity on judgments: Latinx participants were more likely than other participants to say that protagonists should help, p=.023. New measures of participants’ home experiences revealed that mealtime responsibilities depended on family members’ gender, ethnicity and role (i.e., child, parent), ps <.007. These experiences predicted participants’ judgments about how responsibilities should have been distributed: When a participant reported that a family member had been responsible, the participant was more likely to say that family member should have been responsible, p<.001. Ethnicity and family role also predicted these judgments, ps<.005.
Findings from both studies support the notion that emerging adults’ judgments about everyday helping are informed both by situational features and by their own prior experiences with helping at home. The studies also revealed ethnic differences in how youth were involved in chores at home. Findings from Study 2 demonstrate, through reported experiences, how emerging adults think families in these contexts should be organized.

Group Authors

N/A

Authors

• Marie Grace S. Martinez, University of California - Santa Cruz
  Presenting Author

• Audun Dahl, University of California - Santa Cruz
  Non-Presenting Author