The Effects on Children's Moral Judgements of Time and Effort Put into Planning

Abstract

Abstract Children aged 7 and 9 years were told four stories, in two of which protagonists committed similar naughty acts, and in two of which they performed similar good deeds. One good and one naughty protagonist performed their acts spontaneously though deliberately, and the others planned beforehand. Children allocated cake (as an implied reward) or telling off (as a punishment) to the good and the bad protagonists, and then made comparative allocations, which they justified, within the good and the bad pairs. The majority of children apparently ignored the planning variable in their allocations, particularly for the naughty acts; allocating more to the planner than to the spontaneous actor was much more common for the good deeds than for the naughty ones. The apparently more advanced moral evaluations for the good deeds may reflect children's experience of adults’ views of the relevance of planning to the evaluation of good and naughty behaviour.