Continuities and Discontinuities in the Development of Moral Judgments

Prior research has outlined developmental changes within the conventional and personal domains. Research thus far has provided only limited understanding of agerelated changes within the moral domain. That research indicates that there are continuities and discontinuities across ages in moral judgments. The aims of the research presented here were to examine moral judgments in childhood and adolescence, taking into account applications of moral judgments in contexts and the coordination of different considerations in evaluations and decisions. Participants were 167 children and adolescents drawn from two regions of the United States, from diverse ethnic and SES backgrounds, distributed across four age groups from 8 to 17 years. Moral judgments were assessed through interviews around issues of direct harm (hitting), indirect harm (returning dropped money), and helping. Each situation was presented within three conditions: unconflicted situations; situations of conflict with needs of self; and conflicts with needs of another. Situations varied in terms of characteristics of the person who was the object of moral decisions: a generic other, vulnerable other, or antagonistic other. Participants made two types of judgments: whether the action was right or wrong; and whether the actor would have a right to engage in the action if that was the actor's choice. Justifications were elicited for judgments. Cross-age continuities in moral judgments were observed in judgments of acts as wrong in the unconflicted contexts. In contrast, a U-shaped age-related pattern was revealed in judgments of acts as well as the right to engage in acts in the conflicted situations with 8- and 16-year-olds judging acts as wrong and 10-to 14-year-olds more likely to judge acts as right and the actor as having a right to engage in the action. This U-shaped pattern was accompanied by three age-related levels in the coordination of moral and nonmoral elements of situations. (c) 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel