Children's judgements of causality, responsibility and punishment in cases of harm due to omission

Abstract

This study investigated causal and moral reasoning in children 5, 7, 9, and 11 years old. The first of two experiments looked at judgements of causality, responsibility, and punishment as a function of necessary or non‐necessary conditions. Children of all ages made use of necessity information in their causal attributions and, to a lesser extent, in their moral attributions. The second of the two experiments investigated excusing conditions in regard to the same three dependent variables. The mitigating factors of voluntariness and foreseeability were manipulated using the same stories (in necessary condition) from Expt 1. All children except the five‐year‐olds made consistent use of the voluntariness information in their causal and moral reasoning. This factor showed significantly increased usage with age. Foreseeability was used in a consistent manner only by seven‐year‐olds; children both younger and older tended to ignore this variable as a mitigating factor. The results of both experiments are discussed in comparison with analogous work done with college students.