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Punishment is a key mechanism to regulate selfish behaviors and maintain cooperation in a society. However, children often show mixed evaluations about third-party punishment. The current work asked how punishment severity might shape children's social judgments. In two studies, 5- to 10-year-old children heard about a punisher who took different numbers of items from a transgressor and evaluated the punisher's behavior and moral character. In Study 1 (n=68), when the transgression was relatively mild (i.e., unfair sharing), children across ages evaluated taking no items from the unfair sharer ("no punishment") most positively, while evaluating taking three items ("harshest punishment") most negatively. In Study 2 (n=68), when the transgression was more serious (i.e., stealing), younger children evaluated taking two items ("equality-establishing punishment") more positively than older children, while evaluating taking none most negatively. However, children became more likely to evaluate equality-establishing punishment negatively with age. Overall, the current results show that punishment severity is a key factor underlying children's third-party punishment judgments. The current research extends work on moral development by showing how children conceptualize the severity of punishment.
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“But he’s my brother”: The impact of family obligation on moral judgments and decisions
We created practical moral dilemmas for which participants imagined witnessing a transgression by a target person. The identity of the transgressor was manipulated to be either a stranger or the participant's brother. In Experiment 1, whether the target person committed a violation was left ambiguous. Participants made factual (how strongly they believe the target person actually committed a transgression) and unethicality judgments regarding the incident, and rated their willingness to report the transgressor to the police. Given ambiguity (Experiment 1), participants interpreted the facts in favor of their brother, but not in favor of a stranger. This interpretation led to moral judgments and willingness to report that favored family over strangers, while creating overall coherence in reasoning. In Experiment 2, we eliminated the ambiguity of the factual situation so that the possibility of achieving coherence between unethicality of an act and leniency toward a family member was blocked. Nonetheless, participants were less willing to report their brother to the police. Experiment 3 replicated the findings of the first two experiments within an integrated study design. Results from path analyses indicated that the factual judgment depended on factual understanding of an event, but willingness to report depended on identity of the target (i.e., brother vs. stranger), even at the cost of reduced coherence in reasoning. Moral decisions are thus strongly influenced by agent-relative obligations, such as duty to protect a family member.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1827374
- PAR ID:
- 10148745
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Memory cognition
- Volume:
- 48
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0090-502X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 158-170
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-019-00969-7
