But You Promised: Children’s Judgments of Broken Promises

Karen Hussar,Jared Horvath

doi:10.4236/psych.2013.412152

Abstract

Current conceptions regarding children’s understanding of promises (and promise breaking) rely upon absolute distinction: namely, a promise versus a non-promise. The current study expands the understanding of children’s judgments of broken promises to include more nuanced, refined descriptions. Utilizing a four-point rating scale—ranging from “OK” to “very bad”—forty children aged 6 to 10 judged story cards depicting characters breaking commitments not to engage in specific behaviors across three different domains (moral, social-conventional, and personal). Analyses indicated that children judge broken promises in the moral domain more severely than those in the social-conventional domain and broken promises in the social-conventional domain more severely than those in the personal domain. Therefore, children appear to judge broken commitments on a sliding scale in much the same way they judge actions from the moral, social-conventional and personal domains. Results from the current study also suggest an inverse pattern of judgment with regards to broken commitments. Specifically, it appears that the more severely an initial action is judged, the less severely its concurrent commitment condition is judged; and vice versa. These findings help refine our understanding of childhood interpretations of broken promises and engender several unique ideas for future research in this field.

Highlights

A hallmark of childhood psychological research is the progression from diametric classification to a more detailed spectrum of designation
Children were asked to judge the twelve events again; this time the interviewer told participants that the story character had made a commitment not to engage in the action in question before performing it (e.g., Sam promised not to take things that did not belong to him, but stole a quarter from his classmate’s desk; Susan promised to be more active, but decided to read a book during recess)
The goal of this study was to determine if children consider the breaking of commitments to vary in degree of wrongness

Summary

Introduction

A hallmark of childhood psychological research is the progression from diametric classification to a more detailed spectrum of designation. Subsequent social domain theorists expanded this perception and developed a more nuanced prescriptivity scale that allowed children to judge various actions according to a spectrum, typically ranging between “OK” and “very bad” The introduction of this refined rating system advanced research in the field of moral development by revealing the ability of young children to reliably distinguish between moral transgressions, social-conventional transgressions, and personal choices (Nucci & Turiel, 1978; Smetana, 1981; Smetana & Braeges, 1990). Mass determined that children as young as 4 can—and do—successfully identify promises made with sincere intentions, the ability to identify promises regardless of intention begins to emerge by age 6 In her conclusion, Maas argued that childhood understanding of promises progresses from a focus on outcome to a focus on the belief promises create in the listener. By establishing children’s judgments toward various broken commitments, we hope to determine if children judge the breaking of a commitment in terms of the initial grounds for making it

Participants

Design and Procedure

Results

Discussion