The Development of Moral Evaluations in Children and Adults
| dc.contributor.advisor | Moses, Louis | |
| dc.contributor.author | Ochoa, Karlena | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2021-11-23T15:25:34Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2021-11-23 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Although the influence of intent understanding on children’s moral development has been long studied, limited research has examined the influence of belief understanding on that development. The purpose of this dissertation was to further investigate the interplay between children’s mental state understanding, or Theory of Mind, and moral development during childhood. In two studies we presented children with morally-relevant belief vignettes to examine the extent to which they incorporate both intent and belief information in their moral judgments (judgments of moral intent, deserved consequences, praise or blame). We also examined how children’s moral judgments compared to adults’ judgments and whether individual differences in executive function and empathy are related to those judgments. In Study 1 (N = 109 children, N = 42 adults), 4- and 5-year-olds with false belief understanding, but not those without false belief understanding, were able to make appropriate intent judgments in situations in which the agent’s intent did not align with the outcome. Yet, all children had difficulty making consequence judgments based on intent. In Study 2 (N = 61 children, N = 36 adults), 5- and 7-year-olds with false belief understanding were again able to make appropriate intent judgments and 7-year-olds did so at adult-like levels. Nonetheless children still did not differentiate their consequence judgments based on the agent’s intent. That said, children did assign blame and praise based on intent. Children’s moral judgments differed from those of adults in several respects, indicating that moral reasoning develops substantially beyond the early school years. In assessing individual differences, we did not find evidence of a relation between executive function and moral judgments in Study 1, but there was an intriguing relation between children’s empathy and their moral judgments in Study 2. Children with higher parent-reported empathy seemed to be influenced more by the outcome than by intent because they assigned a positive consequence to the agent when the outcome was good and a negative consequence when the outcome was bad. Overall, our findings suggest that integrating theory of mind and moral judgment is a multi-faceted developmental achievement that unfolds only gradually over childhood. | en_US |
| dc.description.embargo | 2022-10-11 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/26896 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | University of Oregon | |
| dc.rights | All Rights Reserved. | |
| dc.subject | Empathy | en_US |
| dc.subject | Executive Function | en_US |
| dc.subject | False Belief Understanding | en_US |
| dc.subject | Moral Judgments | en_US |
| dc.subject | Social Cognitive Development | en_US |
| dc.subject | Theory of Mind | en_US |
| dc.title | The Development of Moral Evaluations in Children and Adults | |
| dc.type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Department of Psychology | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Oregon | |
| thesis.degree.level | doctoral | |
| thesis.degree.name | Ph.D. |
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