Young children's inference of moral disgust from situational and emotional response cues

Abstract

The main purposes of this study were to examine young children's ability to infer disgust in another person elicited by someone else's immoral action, and their ability to properly use the person's reactions in order to infer his/her emotion. Stories with pictures were used, and these abilities were compared with those for anger, which was also elicited by someone else's immoral action. Children of five and six years old, 52 and 54 respectively, and 251 undergraduates participated in the study. Main results were as follows: (a) children were adequately able to infer disgust in another person from a story showing a situation with an immoral action, although not as well as undergraduates; (b) children used the person's reaction toward the immoral action for inferring disgust as well as undergraduates did; and (c) inferring disgust for them seemed to be as easy as inferring anger.