Abstract
DARLEY, JOHN M.; KLOSSON, ELLEN CHERESKIN; and ZANNA, MARK P. Intentions and Their Contexts in the Moral Judgments of Children and Adults. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1978, 49, 66-74. A study was conducted to determine whether the moral judgments of adults and children take into account circumstances which in a legal sense tend to justify or excuse intentional, harm-doing actions. Subjects (first graders, fourth graders, and adults) were presented with a vignette in which 1 child harmed another. For half the subjects, information designed to constitute a valid legal defense was appended; for the other half, no such mitigating circumstance was presented. In various vignettes the legal defenses of necessity, public duty, and provocation were instantiated. The results indicated that each mitigating circumstance led to less recommended punishment for the harm-doing act and that this was so across the entire age range (5-44 years) sampled. The lack of a clear developmental result as well as the implications of these findings for the utility of employing a legal analogy for investigating the development of moral judgments are discussed.
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