Young child rem can make adult-like moral judgements from the age of four, according to a new study which suggests that the ability has often been underestimated in young kids.
The researchers from the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK, conducted the study involving 138 children aged four to eight years old, and 31 adults.
When making moral judgements, adults tend to focus on people's intentions rather than on the outcomes of their actions - hurting someone intentionally is much worse than hurting them accidentally.
However, the prevailing view in developmental psychology is that younger children's moral judgements are mainly based on the outcomes of actions, rather than the intentions of those involved. Despite decades of research there is still disagreement about whether this claim is correct.
To address this, researchers led by Gavin Nobes of UEA's School of Psychology looked at the reasons for the findings of two of the most influential and frequently cited studies - published in 1996 and 2001 - both of which provide strong evidence that young children's moral judgements are mainly outcome-based.
These studies also tested adults, something which enables researchers to establish the mature response against which children at various ages can be compared.
Many of them also made outcome-based judgements, which prompted researchers to question the methods used.
In the original studies children were asked if the action was good or bad. In the new study, the question was rephrased and participants were asked about the person who acted.
Children were asked about pairs of stories in which accidents took place. In one the intention was good and the outcome bad, and in the other the intention was bad but the outcome good.
When the original question was asked the findings were very similar to the previous studies.
However, when the question was rephrased, the four to five-year-old's judgements were equally influenced by intention and outcome, and from five to six years they were mainly intention-based.
The older children's and adult's judgements were essentially reversed, from almost exclusively outcome-based in response to the original question, to almost exclusively intention-based when the rephrased question was asked.
"The long-held claim has been that young children judge according to the outcome of an event, rather than intention. If that is the case, then children's moral judgements are fundamentally different from adults," said Nobes.
"However, our findings indicate that for methodological reasons, children's ability to make similar intention-based judgements has been substantially underestimated," he said.
"We show that they can be remarkably adult-like in their thinking. The implication is that even young children, from around the age of four, can make intention-based moral judgements, just like adults," he added.
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