Children's Reasoning About the Refusal to Help: The Role of Need, Costs, and Social Perspective Taking

Abstract

Children (n = 133, aged 8–13) were interviewed about helping situations that systematically varied in recipient’s need for help and the costs for the helper. In situations where helping a peer involved low costs, children perceived a moral obligation to help that was independent of peer norms, parental authority, and reciprocity considerations. When helping a peer involved high costs this over powered the perceived obligation to help, but only in situations involving low need and when in line with reciprocity. When both need and costs were high, younger children expressed stronger moral indignation while older children were less negative and reasoned in terms of other solutions. Furthermore, stronger moral indignation was related to more advanced social perspective taking skills when need and costs were high.

The development of bystander intentions and social–moral reasoning about intergroup verbal aggression

“…Additionally, we build on existing research that shows the relevance of intergroup processes for children and adolescents' social interactions (see Fitzroy & Rutland, 2010;Killen & Rutland, 2011;Nesdale, 2008;Sierksma et al, 2014), and extend it further by applying this approach to bystander intentions during incidents of intergroup verbal aggression.…”

“…The developmental intergroup approach (e.g., Abrams & Rutland, 2011;Rutland, Killen & Abrams, 2010) has been applied to understand developmental variation in attitudes across contexts of social exclusion (e.g., Abrams et al, 2003), aggression (e.g., Nesdale & Duffy, 2012) and prosocial behaviour (e.g., Sierksma, Thijs, Verkuyten & Komter, 2014). To date, no study to our knowledge has employed this approach to specifically examine developmental differences in rates of prosocial bystander intentions from childhood into adolescence.…”

“…However as children get older and become more aware of group dynamics their justifications become more multifaceted (Killen & Rutland, 2011). Research suggests that adolescents are more able to focus on additional concerns that might arise from intergroup aggression, drawing on social conventional (i.e., "My group says it's OK to say that") or psychological reasons (i.e., "It is none of my business; they can say what they like") (see Killen, Rutland et al, 2013;Sierksma et al, 2014). Given these findings, it was expected that younger children would emphasise moral reasoning when justifying their bystander intentions and adolescents would prioritise psychological or social-conventional reasoning.…”

“…Participants were presented with scenarios describing the aggressive act (e.g., Jones, Livingstone & Manstead., 2012;Nesdale et al, 2013;Sierksma et al, 2014). Verbal aggression was the focus of the scenario because it is both a prevalent and overt direct form of aggression that is experienced by both age groups (Smith & Shu, 2000), and has particularly damaging psychological effects for the victim (Verkuyten & Thijs, 2002).…”

Moral Judgments and Emotions in Contexts of Peer Exclusion and Victimization

“…An interesting and unanswered question, to be described in more detail later, is whether these emotions are related to children's motivation to engage in intergroup exclusion such as prejudice and bias. A study by Sierksma, Thijs, Verkuyten and Komter (2014) is one of the first to examine this relation. However, we first need to examine what is known about individual motivation based on moral emotions.…”