The moral self-concept in preschool children: Its dimensions and relation to prosocial behaviors

Abstract

Recent theories have highlighted the relevance of the moral self-concept (MSC) for prosocial behavior. Its early development and internal structure is still unknown, though. With two studies, we aimed to investigate the structure of the MSC in early childhood. Furthermore, we explored prosocial behavioral correlates (helping, sharing, comforting). In a first study, we explored four to six-year-olds (N = 127). We assessed explicit (puppet-interview) and implicit (IAT) measures of the MSC and observed child behavior. Our results show that MSC was independent from other self-concept domains. The three prosocial dimensions (helping, sharing and comforting) appear to be represented within the MSC separately. While the IAT yielded no significant relations with behaviors, the explicit MSC was meaningfully related to prosocial behavior. The second study (N = 314) underscores the results of the first, by replicating the factor structure of the MSC in confirmatory factor analysis. In conclusion, the studies underscore the MSC's different dimensions and their relations to prosocial behaviors in preschool children.

Neural processing of moral content reflects moral identity in 10‐year‐old children

“…Concerning the implicit moral self, we did not find any effect on the ERPs nor any correlation with the moral identity measures. The lack of correlation between explicit and implicit measures is in line with what reported in previous studies in both adults and children (Christner et al, 2020;Johnston et al, 2013;Perugini & Leone, 2009;Pletti et al, 2019;Sticker et al, 2021). The lack of effects of the implicit moral self The current study also provided general information about how moral content is processed in middle/late childhood, irrespective of moral identity and the moral self-concept.…”

“…Moral identity, that is, how important it is for someone's identity or sense of self to be moral, has been proposed to be a unique characteristic of human morality (Korsgaard, 1996). It is a crucial predictor of prosocial behavior in both adults and children (Hardy & Carlo, 2011;Hertz & Krettenauer, 2015;Sticker et al, 2021). Yet, its development remains hotly debated and virtually nothing is known on the neurocognitive processes that relate to its developmental emergence.…”

“…Interestingly, implicit shame‐prone self‐concept was found to relate to borderline personality features in girls aged 10–14 years (Hawes et al., 2013), and implicit aggressive self‐concept was found to predict aggressive behavior in middle childhood (Grumm et al., 2011). However, two studies found no relation between the implicit moral self‐concept in childhood and prosocial behavior, even in middle childhood (Christner et al., 2020; Sticker et al., 2021). This could either suggest that its relation to actual behavior is rather weak or that the implicit moral self‐concept might only emerge in adulthood.…”

“…Such a moral self‐concept is initially very rudimentary and may consist of interiorization of parental norms (Kochanska, 2002; Kochanska et al., 2010). It becomes more refined as children start describing themselves as people who prefer carrying out prosocial actions and avoiding antisocial action (Sengsavang & Krettenauer, 2015; Sticker et al., 2021). However, the moral self‐concept one can observe in children is not a full‐fledged moral identity.…”

The emergence of a coherent self-concept: A longitudinal study on the development of the moral self.

“…The dimensional SC scores resulted from the mean value of all items of a scale (cf. Marsh et al, 2002;Sengsavang & Krettenauer, 2015;Sticker et al, 2021). A higher score indicates higher importance of the respective SC domain, based on behavioral preferences for the associated behaviors.…”