Because motivations for prosocial actions typically are unclear, sometimes even to actors but especially for observers, it is difficult to study prosocial motivation. This article reviews research that provides evidence regarding children's motives for prosocial behaviors. First, we present a heuristic model to classify motives on the dimension of…

This meta-analytic review of 42 studies covering 8,009 participants (ages 4-20) examines the relation of moral emotion attributions to prosocial and antisocial behavior. A significant association is found between moral emotion attributions and prosocial and antisocial behaviors ("d" = 0.26, 95% CI [0.15, 0.38]; "d" = 0.39, 95%…

"Interpersonal" rejection and "intergroup" exclusion in childhood reflect different, but complementary, aspects of child development. Interpersonal rejection focuses on individual differences in personality traits, such as wariness and being fearful, to explain bully-victim relationships. In contrast, intergroup exclusion focuses on how in-group…

Moral judgments are an important aspect of social reasoning, not arbitrary products of social formations. Maintains that Gabennesch relegates moral concepts to reification, failing to account for the distinctions between conventionality and moral concepts. (BC)

Makes a case for rereading the fact-value dichotomy that currently divides the contemporaneous literatures dealing with children's moral reasoning development and their evolving theories of mind. Presents findings from two research programs, in which children's beliefs about truth and rightness are combined, to illustrate the natural…

Some studies indicate that individuals recognize conventional norms as social contrivances; others, that individuals reify social formations as something other than social products. Questions about comparatively transparent rules and the use of simplistic questions for complex phenomena give an exaggerated portrayal of individuals' awareness of…

Presents a developmentally grounded perspective on study of social life in cultures that examines sources of coexistence of sociability and opposition, harmony and conflict, acceptance and critique. Proposes that coexistence of these elements is systematically connected both to development of distinct domains of thought and to the dynamics of…

Using social information processing and cultural change models as explanatory frameworks, this article reviews the literature on Latino parental control and its implications for child development. It is argued that the use of parental control in Latino families may have motivational roots in cultural childrearing goals such as "familismo"…

Outlines new directions for research on parents' contributions to children's values. Advocates research that demonstrates that parental understanding of a particular child's characteristics and situation is the mark of effective parenting, traces differential impact of varieties of parent responsiveness, assesses conditions surrounding the fact…