Abstract
This study investigated the role of moral reasoning and moral emotions (i.e., sympathy and guilt) in the development of young children’s donating behavior (N = 160 4- and 8-year-old children). Donating was measured through children’s allocation of resources (i.e., stickers) to needy peers and was framed as a donation to “World Vision.” Children’s sympathy was measured with both self- and primary caregiver-reports and participants reported their anticipation of guilt feelings following actions that violated prosocial moral norms, specifically the failure to help or share. Participants also provided justifications for their anticipated emotions, which were coded as representing moral or non-moral reasoning processes. Children’s moral reasoning emerged as a significant predictor of donating behavior. In addition, results demonstrated significant developmental and gender effects, with 8-year-olds donating significantly more than 4-year-olds and 4-year-old girls making higher value donations than boys of the same age. We discuss donation behaviors within the broader context of giving and highlight the moral developmental antecedents of giving behaviors in childhood.
Highlights
Giving is one of the key social behaviors that distinguishes our species from others (Knafo and Plomin, 2006) and fosters care and cooperation in social interactions (Staub, 1979)
Child-reported sympathy was positively correlated with moral reasoning, child age, and primary caregiver’s level of education
The present study investigated the development of donating, a specific subtype of giving, in early and middle childhood, as well as the role of affective-moral and cognitive-moral variables as antecedents of donation behaviors
Summary
Giving is one of the key social behaviors that distinguishes our species from others (Knafo and Plomin, 2006) and fosters care and cooperation in social interactions (Staub, 1979). Because of its roots in early childhood and its importance to large-scale fairness and care (Malti et al, 2012), a rich body of research in psychology has focused on understanding the development and motivation of children’s giving behaviors (Eisenberg et al, 2014) It is often the case, that little distinction is drawn between different subtypes of giving. Sharing is completed privately and there is no opportunity for the recipient to respond, retaliate, or form an evaluation of the (non)sharer (Gummerum et al, 2010) In this way, sharing in the dictator game is anonymous, unreciprocated, and costly (the shared items are typically selected so that they are valuable to the giver and there is no opportunity for the allocated items to be returned). Givers in donation tasks are confronted with potential recipients who exhibit clear need, often on the basis of poverty (Dlugokinski and Firestone, 1973; Rushton and Wheelwright, 1980), injury (Knight et al, 1994), illness (Boe and Ponder, 1981), or disability (Isen and Noonberg, 1979)
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