Biases in children's and adults' moral judgments.
Two experiments examined biases in children's (5/6- and 7/8-year-olds) and adults' moral judgments. Participants at all ages judged that it was worse to produce harm when harm occurred (a) through action rather than inaction (omission bias), (b) when physical contact with the victim was involved (physical contact principle), and (c) when the harm was produced as a direct means to an end rather than as an unintended but foreseeable side effect of the action (intention principle). The youngest participants, however, did not incorporate benefit when making judgments about situations in which harm to one individual resulted in benefit to five individuals. Older participants showed some preference for benefit resulting from action (commission) as opposed to inaction (omission). The findings are discussed in the context of the theory that moral judgments result, in part, from the operation of an inherent, intuitive moral faculty compared with the theory that moral judgments require development of necessary cognitive abilities.
School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK. nlp765@bham.ac.uk
Nina L
NL
Powell
Stuart W G
SW
Derbyshire
Robert E
RE
Guttentag
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D019548:Crime Victims / Q000523:psychology*; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D033182:Intention; D019545:Intuition; D008297:Male; D035863:Moral Development; D035481:Retrospective Moral Judgment; D018570:Risk Assessment; D040242:Risk Reduction Behavior