Happiness is one of the most important parenting goals in today's modern society. To promote a happy childhood, we need to understand what happiness means to children. Contrary to the view that young children may equate happiness with satisfying material desires and experiencing simple pleasures, in this article, I review recent developmental…

Social exclusion, a pervasive and impactful phenomenon particularly prominent during preadolescence, has traditionally been construed through a moral deficiency lens. This study departs from prevailing research trends, casting a novel light on the phenomenon in the context of normative moral development. It elucidates the role of social exclusion…

The ability to distinguish between mere equality in resource distributions and fairness based on a broader range of contextual factors is of paramount importance in social decision making and is a critical component of morality. Children's developmental shift from viewing inequality as a dichotomous moral issue toward a more nuanced understanding…

Moral stories are a means of communicating the consequences of our actions and emphasizing virtuous behaviour, such as honesty. However, the effect of these stories on children's lie-telling has yet to be thoroughly explored. The current study investigated the influence of moral stories on children's willingness to lie for another individual.…

Previous research has found that when children engage in social and moral transgressions, they take steps to either remedy or explain their behavior. However, no prior systematic investigation has examined the strategies children employ to 'correct' their behavior in future situations. The present study employed a domain theory lens to investigate…

Parental induction of empathy-related guilt plays an important role in children's moral development. However, guilt induction can also be psychologically controlling and detrimental for youth adjustment. This study provided a more nuanced view of parental guilt induction by examining how the nature of a child's misdeed and the structure and…

The purpose of the study was to advance our understanding of the developmental precursors of Moral Disengagement (MD) and the role of MD in the development of antisocial behavior from early risk among an ethnically diverse sample of 187 low-income boys followed prospectively from ages 1.5 to 17. Results indicated associations between early…

Recently, experimental economists have become increasingly interested in behaviors relating to morality, and one of the main tools for examining these issues has been game theory. Even though developmental psychologists have investigated similar topics for decades, this research has found little resonance. Similarly, economists have only recently…

Research on moral behavior in children is sorely lacking in the behavioral literature. Yet, behavioral research documenting effective treatment of children with behavioral and emotional problems has often failed to generalize or to focus on moral behavior. Developmental psychologists have researched moral behavior and have provided models of moral…

In his lectures published in 1902, George Still described 43 children in his clinical practice who had serious problems with sustained attention and self-regulation. George Still certainly did not use the current terminology for this disorder, but many historians of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have inferred that the children he…

Although conscience has been the focus of reflection for centuries, fundamental questions regarding its organization have not been fully answered. To address those questions, the authors applied structural equation modeling techniques to longitudinal data comprising multiple behavioral measures of children's conscience, obtained in parallel…

The authors explore children's use of intention information in evaluating the moral quality of others' actions. They also address links among mental state understanding, motives-based moral reasoning, and children's own moral behavior. (Contains 2 tables.)

Summarizes the main debate points on the issue and nature of bullies and bullying, and clarifies unresolved issues concerning the nature and limits of social competence values. Argues that variations in children's emotion processes may underlie some individual differences that have been found in empathy, social information processing, and reactive…

Sociologists and psychologists have shown increasing interest in moral emotions such as pride, shame, and guilt, including their developmental role. While these emotions have an important part in normal development, the chronically shame-prone person has feelings of worthlessness, incompetence, and helplessness; a guilt-prone person dwells on…