Children's Judgments of Flags and Flag‐Burning

Abstract

This study examined children's conceptions of flags as social conventions and understandings of the symbolic and psychological consequences associated with transgressions toward flags. Seventy-two children, at 6, 8, and 10 years, answered general questions about flags as social conventions and judged flag-burning scenarios in which intentions of agents and consequences for recipients were varied. Flag-burning acts were motivated by symbolic, accidental, or instrumental intentions and occurred in public or private. Children at all ages viewed flags as social conventions (i.e., alterable), and symbolic acts of flag-burning occurring in public locations were judged more negatively than private transgressions. Age differences were found in evaluations of instrumental violations and in justifications used to evaluate flag-burning incidents. Overall, findings suggest that despite age-related increases in understanding of flags as meaningful collective symbols, children at all ages considered transgressions to be important and to have moral consequences (i.e., psychological harm).

The Development of Reasoning about the Teaching of Values in School and Family Contexts

“…Wainryb and colleagues (Wainryb, Shaw, Laupa, & Smith, 2001;Wainryb, Shaw, & Maianu, 1998) found that children exhibit increasing tolerance for some forms of dissent in belief and expression with age (although not dissent on moral values and beliefs). Similarly, Helwig and Prencipe (1999) found that although both younger and older children tend to view antipatriotic sentiment expressed in acts of flag burning as wrong, children were less likely with age to advocate laws that prohibit flag burning, reflecting their concern with censorship of the expression of unpopular beliefs. Given the paucity of research on nonmoral character values in the social-cognitive development literature, it was not possible to make specific predications about this area, except to say that although children may endorse the teaching of relevant nonmoral character values (such as "industriousness") in school settings, they may be less likely to view them as obligatory by law or to see them as necessary candidates for values education than they would moral values (Nucci, 1997).…”

Reasoning about family honour among two generations of Hindu Indian-Americans

“…Second, outside of work in cultural psychology there is some precedent for 'moral' judgements of distinctly symbolic matters. Studies have shown that judgements of damage to objects (e.g., flag-burning) are moralised (Helwig & Prencipe, 1999) and that certain sacred values reflect non-instrumental reasoning (Ginges & Atran, 2009). Lastly, the distinction may underlie group differences in moral points of view.…”

“…Second, psychologists (e.g., Turiel, 1983) explain our abilities to perceive moral violations as inferential reasoning processes facilitated by observing and/or experiencing the intrinsic or instrumental consequences of acts (recognition of pain, unequal distribution, etc). Symbolic meanings have been Reasoning about family honour 81 largely absent in studies of moral psychology (although for an exception regarding judgements of flag-burning, see Helwig & Prencipe, 1999). As highlighted above, family honour is often upheld through acts of premarital sexual abstinence and decisions about suitable marriage partners.…”

“…To control for order-effects, half of the participants heard the scenarios in the order in which they appear in Appendix A, while half heard the scenarios in the reverse order. In line with clinical interviewing techniques used in other moral reasoning studies (e.g., Helwig & Prencipe, 1999), for each scenario participants were asked the same set of questions (in this study 10 questions) in the same order (following the tradition portion and then the violation portion of the scenario) to probe their reasoning about the traditions and tradition violations.…”

“…Coding systems for perceived functions and participant justifications were based on previous coding systems in moral psychology (e.g., Helwig & Prencipe, 1999;Neff, 2001) but adapted to account for the specific themes of the present study. Modifications were made using a random selection of 25% of the participants' responses (evenly distributed by generation of the participant, gender of the participant and gender of the story protagonist).…”