Personal Injury and Property Damage in the Moral Judgments of Children

Abstract

ELKIND, DAVID, and DABEK, RUTH F. Personal Injury and Property Damage in the Moral Judgments of Children. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1977, 48, 518-522. 72 children, 24 each at the kindergarten, second-, and fourth-grade levels, participated in a study of moral judgment. Each child responded to 6 story pairs corresponding to all possible combinations of intentionality (intentional/unintentional) and type of damage (personal injury/property damage). Results supported the hypotheses that: with intentionality constant, children at all age levels judged personal injury as more culpable than property damage; with type of damage held constant, children at all age levels judged intentional acts to be more culpable than unintentional ones; and, when type of damage and intentionality both varied, young children judged according to damage while older children judged according to internationality. It was concluded that personal injury is an important dimension of moral judgment that should be considered in future studies of this aspect of child development.