Children's utilization of emotion expectancies in moral decision‐making

Abstract

This study investigated the relevance of emotion expectancies for children's moral decision-making. The sample included 131 participants from three different grade levels (M = 8.39 years, SD = 2.45, range 4.58-12.42). Participants were presented a set of scenarios that described various emotional outcomes of (im)moral actions and asked to decide what they would do if they were in the protagonists' shoes. Overall, it was found that the anticipation of moral emotions predicted an increased likelihood of moral choices in antisocial and prosocial contexts. In younger children, anticipated moral emotions predicted moral choice for prosocial actions, but not for antisocial actions. Older children showed evidence for the utilization of anticipated emotions in both prosocial and antisocial behaviours. Moreover, for older children, the decision to act prosocially was less likely in the presence of non-moral emotions. Findings suggest that the impact of emotion expectancies on children's moral decision-making increases with age. Contrary to happy victimizer research, the study does not support the notion that young children use moral emotion expectancies for moral decision-making in the context of antisocial actions.

Preschoolers' and Third Graders' Understanding of the Causal Relations of Emotions and Behaviors in Moral Situations

“…In contrast to Hertz and Krettenauer (2014), the current study showed that even young children could predict behaviors within modified experimental procedures that brought out the children's abilities. In Study 1, similar to Hertz and Krettenauer (2014), participants were asked to predict each behavior that was parallelly presented.…”

“…Can children predict moral behaviors based on emotions? Krettenauer and his colleagues investigated this possibility (Hertz & Krettenauer, 2014; Krettenauer et al, 2011) and systematically examined the effects of emotions on future moral behaviors of children and adolescents. The results indicated that participants gave more credit to the emotional aspects of judgments about behaviors with age.…”

“…A person might feel a sense of pride in preventing themselves from conducting antisocial behaviors. Hertz and Krettenauer (2014) compared non‐moral emotions (e.g., happiness by obtaining personal benefits) and the sense of guilt in antisocial behavioral settings, although they did not consider the sense of pride. It is useful to examine the effect of pride on antisocial behaviors when examining the development of children's emotional understanding.…”

Spendthrifts and Tightwads in Childhood: Feelings about Spending Predict Children's Financial Decision Making

“…For example, regret and sadness experienced by 6-to 7-year-olds about a choice made on one day were associated with making a better choice the following day (O'Connor, McCormack, Beck, & Feeney, 2015). In another example, 4-to 12year-old children indicated being more likely to engage in a costly prosocial act when given reason to expect a positive emotion (pride) as compared with a negative emotion (sadness; Hertz & Krettenauer, 2014).…”

Specifics of moral choices made by children aged 6 to 8 years in situations with ethnocultural context

“…Hertz and T. Krettenauer (2014) researched into the effect of emotions on children's moral choices and found out that the anticipation of moral emotions predicted an increased likelihood of moral choices in antisocial and prosocial contexts. In younger children, anticipated moral emotions predicted moral choice for prosocial actions, but not for antisocial actions.…”