Children's Moral Emotions and Moral Cognition: Developmental and Educational Perspectives, New Directions for Child and adolescent Development

Abstract

Children's emerging morality involves the development of moral emotions and moral cognition. Developmental research suggests that emotions play an important role in dealing with moral conflict situations, and they help children differentiate moral concepts from other social judgments. However, emotions and their role in moral cognition and moral behavior have yet to be addresses systematically in empirical research. In this volume, the authors show how integrative developmental research on children's moral emotions and moral cognition can help us understand how children's morality evolves. As both moral emotions and moral cognition are related to children's moral, prosocial behavior, as well as to their immoral, aggressive behavior, studying how moral emotions and moral cognition interact is not only of conceptual significance to developmental researchers, but also of practical importance to educators. A central premise of the volume is that moral emotions interact with moral cognition in different ways across development. An integrative developmental perspective on moral emotions and moral cognition thus offers an important conceptual framework for understanding children's emerging morality and designing developmentally sensitive moral intervention strategies. The authors summarize the empirical literature linking moral emotions to moral cognition and discuss promising conceptual avenues and methodological approaches to study children's moral emotions and moral cognition. They also provide examples illustrating how the principles of integrative moral education can be applied in educational practice.