Abstract
Moral emotions such as shame, guilt and pride are the result of an evaluation of the own behavior as (morally) right or wrong. The capacity to experience moral emotions is thought to be an important driving force behind socially appropriate behavior. The relationship between moral emotions and social behavior in young children has not been studied extensively in normally hearing (NH) children, let alone in those with a hearing impairment. This study compared young children with hearing impairments who have a cochlear implant (CI) to NH peers regarding the extent to which they display moral emotions, and how this relates to their social functioning and language skills. Responses of 184 NH children and 60 children with CI (14–61 months old) to shame-/guilt- and pride-inducing events were observed. Parents reported on their children’s social competence and externalizing behavior, and experimenters observed children’s cooperative behavior. To examine the role of communication in the development of moral emotions and social behavior, children’s language skills were assessed. Results show that children with CI displayed moral emotions to a lesser degree than NH children. An association between moral emotions and social functioning was found in the NH group, but not in the CI group. General language skills were unrelated to moral emotions in the CI group, yet emotion vocabulary was related to social functioning in both groups of children. We conclude that facilitating emotion language skills has the potential to promote children’s social functioning, and could contribute to a decrease in behavioral problems in children with CI specifically. Future studies should examine in greater detail which factors are associated with the development of moral emotions, particularly in children with CI. Some possible directions for future research are discussed.
Highlights
Research shows that moral emotions such as shame, guilt and pride have the ability to promote positive social behavior and to protect against negative social behavior in the normally hearing (NH) population [2, 3, 21]
To our knowledge, this study is the first to examine whether the link between moral emotions and social behavior can already be observed in young children
We examined this in a group of NH children and in a group of children with hearing impairments who had received a cochlear implant (CI)
Summary
Nunner-Winkler [10] found that 8-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, expect negative feelings after a moral transgression This seems to imply that young children are able to experience a moral emotion, their ability to anticipate the consequences of their behavior is still limited. The ability of children with hearing impairments to experience and express moral emotions, and how this ability relates to their social functioning, has received little or no attention to date even though social problems are known to exist in this population. In order for a personal set of moral standards to develop, children need to be able to judge their own behavior through other people’s eyes, which requires certain socio-cognitive abilities. Regardless of children’s hearing status, we expect to find a positive relationship between their ability to understand and use emotion language and the extent to which they express moral emotions. We explore whether earlier implantation promotes children’s social and emotional functioning similar to what has been found for their spoken language skills [16]
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