This research with two studies examined whether young children's moral judgments of honesty and dishonesty predict their actual cheating behavior. Participants were 200 children aged 3-6 years (2021-2022. Study 1: N = 80, M[subscript age] = 4.96, 40 girls; Study 2: N = 120, M[subscript age] = 4.98, 60 girls; all middle-class Han Chinese). Children…

When making moral judgments of past actions, adults often think counterfactually about what could have been done differently. Considerable evidence suggests that counterfactual thinking emerges around age 6, but it remains unknown how this development influences children's moral judgments. Across two studies, Australian children aged 4-9 (N = 236,…

Condemnation is ubiquitous in the social world and adults treat condemnation as a costly signal. We explore when children begin to treat condemnation as a signal by presenting 4- to 9-year-old children (N = 435) with stories involving a condemner of stealing and a noncondemner. Children were asked to predict who would be more likely to steal as…

This three-armed randomized controlled trial examined how moral disengagement and social norms account for change in bullying behavior and their potential as targets of anti-bullying components within separate interventions among 1200 French-speaking Belgian elementary students (48% boys, 9-12 year-olds, 57 classes, nine schools) during 2018-2019…

The current study examined relations between distinct aspects of moral functioning, and their cognitive and emotional correlates, in preschool age children. Participants were 171 typically developing 3- to 6-year-olds. Each child completed several tasks, including (a) moral tasks assessing both performance of various moral actions and evaluations…

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…

The neurocognitive development of moral and conventional judgments was examined. Event-related potentials were recorded while 24 adolescents (13 years) and 30 young adults (20 years) read scenarios with 1 of 3 endings: moral violations, conventional violations, or neutral acts. Participants judged whether the act was acceptable or unacceptable…

This study examined judgments and reasoning about four parental discipline practices (induction or reasoning and three practices involving "psychological control"; Barber, 1996; two forms of shaming and love withdrawal) among children (7-14 years of age) from urban and rural China and Canada (N = 288) in response to a moral…

Children and adolescents evaluated group inclusion and exclusion in the context of generic and group-specific norms involving morality and social conventions. Participants ("N" = 381), aged 9.5 and 13.5 years, judged an in-group member's decision to deviate from the norms of the group, whom to include, and whether their personal…

Children's judgments about inclusion and exclusion of children with disabilities were investigated in a Swiss sample of 6-, 9-, and 12-year-old children from inclusive and noninclusive classrooms (N = 422). Overall, the majority of children judged it as morally wrong to exclude children with disabilities. Yet, participants were less likely to…

Developmental trajectories and individual differences in 70 American middle-income 2.5- to 4-year olds' moral judgments were examined 3 times across 1 year using latent growth modeling. At Wave 1, children distinguished hypothetical moral from conventional transgressions on all criteria, but only older preschoolers did so when rating deserved…

Children (n = 133, aged 8-13) were interviewed about helping situations that systematically varied in recipient's need for help and the costs for the helper. In situations where helping a peer involved low costs, children perceived a moral obligation to help that was independent of peer norms, parental authority, and reciprocity…

Rule violations are likely to serve as key contexts for learning to reason about public identity. In an initial study with 91 children aged 4-9 years, social emotions and self-presentational concerns were more likely to be cited when children were responding to hypothetical vignettes involving social-conventional rather than moral violations. In 2…

This study investigated differences in children's and adolescents' experiences of harming their siblings and friends. Participants ("N" = 101; 7-, 11-, and 16-year-olds) provided accounts of events when they hurt a younger sibling and a friend. Harm against friends was described as unusual, unforeseeable, and circumstantial. By contrast,…

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%…