Nelson (1980) Morality in Children

Background:

Jean Piaget suggested that morality gradually develops during childhood.

There are three stages:

• Premolar Stage: from birth until 4-6 years.
• Heteronomous Morality Stage: from 6 to 10 years – judgments based on outcomes rather than motives.
• Autonomous Morality Stage: from 10 to 13 years – learn to formulate their moral rules and make judgments based on motives.

Nelson thought that Piaget underestimated children, so she conducted two experiments to test the basis of children’s moral criteria.

Aim:

To demonstrate that children as young as 3 years old use motives and outcomes as relevant criteria for moral judgments.

Sample: Study 1

• 60 preschool children – mean age 3.4
• 30 primary school children – mean age 7.4
• Half female, half male,
• Mostly white, middle class children.
• Parents gave consent.

Procedure:

Independent measures design – each child participated in one condition

4 versions of a story: All children heard each version.

1. Positive motive, positive outcome.
2. Positive motive, negative outcome.
3. Negative motive, positive outcome.
4. Negative motive, negative outcome.

Independent variable:

• Verbal story
• Verbal story with pictures and implied motive (facial expressions)
• Verbal story with pictures and explicit motive (thought bubble)

Dependent variable:

• Child’s judgment on how good or bad the actor was – scale 1 to 7
• Asked to tell the story exactly – checking errors of valance.

Results:

• When motive was expressed explicitly = good and bad outcomes had a bigger effect on judgments.
• Good outcomes were rated more positively than bad outcomes.
• Significant use of outcome info in “good motive” stories under all presentations, however in picture presentations use of outcome was used when the motive was bad.
• Three-year-old made more errors when recalling motives/outcomes compared to seven-year-old.
• Three-year-old made more errors when recalling motive valences than outcome valences when info was conflicting – 0.41
• Congruency or in-congruency of valence info had no effect on seven-year-old – 0.16

Conclusion:

Young children place more value on valence rather than motive and outcome. They are more influenced by bad rather than good.

Sample – Study 2

• 27 preschool males and females – mean age 3.8

Procedure:

• Reverse the order = present outcome before motive
• Same materials as Study 1.

Results:

• Good outcomes were rated more positively than bad outcomes.
• Good motives were rated more positively than bad motives.
• When motive/outcome was negative = other cue had less influence on judgment.
• Judgments in verbal presentation were less influence by motive than those in picture presentation.
• More errors recalling in “good motive” stories if outcome was bad.
• “Bad motive” stories = more errors when outcome was good.
• More errors made for in-congruent pairings rather than congruent pairings.

Conclusion:

Making moral judgments require understanding of concepts of good and bad. A child must understand the relationship between action, motive and goal to make a judgment.

Strengths:

 

• Replicable: The main procedures of the experiments were standardized, meaning that the can be replicated and the reliability of the results can be checked.
• Relatively generalizable: Although the experiment was not very large scale, it had a reasonable sample of boy and girls of different age groups, therefore it can be somewhat generalised to others. 
• Ecological validity: The stories used by the experiments were realistic and likely to happen in real life. This makes the children’s judgments more natural.
• Child-friendly experiment: Rating scales and stories were modified to suit a child. This means that the participants are less likely to get confused and distort the results.

 

Weaknesses:

• Cultural bias: The experiment did not really acknowledge cultural factors. There is always the possibility that children’s judgments are based on their cultural norms, ethnicity and social-economic status. Therefore, results could have been affected by these and lowered the reliability.
• Demand characteristics: It is possible that the children changed their answers because of the experimenters being present and the artificial surroundings, making the results less reliable.
• Artificial environment: The environment the experiment was conducted in was artificial and unrealistic. This may have had affected the children’s answers.