Children's judgements of causality, responsibility and punishment in cases of harm due to omission

Abstract

87This study investigated causal and moral reasoning in children 5, 7, 9, and 11 years old. The first of two experiments looked at judgements of causality, responsibility, and punishment as a function of necessary or non-necessary conditions. Children of all ages made use of necessity information in their causal attributions and, to a lesser extent, in their moral attributions. The second of the two experiments investigated excusing conditions in regard to the same three dependent variables. The mitigating factors of voluntariness and foreseeability were manipulated using the same stories (in necessary condition) from Expt 1. All children except the five-year-olds made consistent use of the voluntariness information in their causal and moral reasoning. This factor showed significantly increased usage with age. Foreseeability was used in a consistent manner only by seven-year-olds; children both younger and older tended to ignore this variable as a mitigating factor. The results of both experiments are discussed in comparison with analogous work done with college students.

The development of intention-based morality: The influence of intention salience and recency, negligence, and outcome on children’s and adults’ judgments.

“…Since this question has not been asked in previous studies it is not possible to know whether their participants also considered agents to be negligent, but it seems likely that they did, especially as, with very few exceptions (e.g., Nobes et al, 2009;Schleifer, Shultz, & Lefebvre-Pinard, 1983;Shultz, Wright & Schleifer, 1986), participants were not told that agents were careful.…”

Overcoming the Positive‐Capture Strategy in Young Children: Learning About Indeterminacy

“…Second, the research on scientific reasoning has demonstrated that, for both adults and children, the decision to search for additional evidence before accepting a hypothesis is strongly influenced by the desirability of the hypothesis under consideration (Klahr, 2000;Klahr, Fay, & Dunbar, 1993;Kunda, 1990;Tschirgi, 1980). Third, the literature on social development suggests that preschool children are highly motivated to engage in discussions of and ratings for situations involving credit and blame (Dunn, 1988;Nelson-le Gall, 1984;Schleifer, Schultz, & Lefebvre-Pinard, 1983).…”

The influence of negligence, intention, and outcome on children’s moral judgments

“…Empirical evidence concerning children's understanding of negligence includes Schleifer, Shultz, and Lefebvre-Pinard's (1983) investigation of whether negligence influences children's moral judgments. They reported that most 5-year-olds understood when an omitted action (e.g., a gym instructor who failed to use safety mats; a caretaker who did not mend a step) was the cause of an accident.…”