This study contributes to a developmental approach focusing on emotions as being of key significance in explaining the Happy Victimizer pattern (HV pattern) among adults. Based on findings from our own research on moral emotions within the Happy Victimizer paradigm, we claim that a purely cognitive approach to explain the HV is overly narrow.…

Research on the Happy Victimizer Phenomenon has mainly focused on preschool and schoolchildren, with a few studies also including adolescents and young adults. The main finding is that young children, despite knowing that harming someone is wrong, ascribe positive feelings to perpetrators and offer hedonistic justifications, interpreted as a lack…

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…

In three experiments involving 207 preschoolers and 28 adults, we investigated the extent to which young children base moral judgments of actions aimed to protect others on utilitarian principles. When asked to judge the rightness of intervening to hurt one person in order to save five others, the large majority of children aged 3 to 5 years…

Investigated six- to nine-year-old children's understanding of the principle of mutual trust by testing children's ability to make correct blame attributions on the basis of second-order beliefs. Subjects were presented with four story frames. Stories differed in protagonist's second-order belief about another's knowledge. (Author/NH)

The nature of the developmental shift from adolescence to adulthood has been of ongoing interest to researchers studying the development of socio-moral cognition from within the "cognitive-developmental" paradigm. This paper identifies three dimensions along which developmental changes in socio-moral cognition occur during late…

Explores Gibbs's (1977, 1979) hypothesis that mature levels of moral reasoning are related to affirmative coping with human needs while conventional reasoning is related to abortive coping. In one study of 28 women and another of 70 adults, an interview questionnaire was used to assess ability to deal with Fromm's existential needs. (Author/CB)

This literature review examines the potential of selective recall for assessing level of moral reasoning. Rest's Defining Issues Test was administered to five individuals to test the applicability of certain principles of selective recall in assessing moral reasoning. (IAH)

Investigated 3-, 5-, and 7-year-olds' and adults' integration of information about intentions, acts, and outcomes in moral judgments of psychological harm. Found that participants at all ages judged it wrong to inflict fear or embarrassment on unwilling participants. Younger children tended to use outcome rules when assigning punishment; older…

At age 13, and for the next 20 years, male subjects were periodically interviewed about their moral judgments. Adolescents with mature use of defense mechanisms reasoned at higher stages of moral judgment 10 to 20 years after the initial interview than did those with immature use of defense mechanisms. (BC)

Videotaped stories depicting deliberate lies and unintentionally untrue statements were presented to 200 subjects evenly divided into the following age groups: 5, 8, 9, 11 years, and adult. Definitions of lying were seen to change gradually over this age range. (Author/RH)

The relationships of age, gender, and educational level with moral development in 94 middle-class 28- to 55-year-old adults (32 males and 62 females) were studied. Subjects were administered Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Interview (MJI). Males scored higher on the MJI than females. Findings support the continued development of moral judgment through…

Consistency of moral judgment across different dilemmas and social contexts and the relationship between the structure and content of moral judgment was studied for 40 men given hypothetical dilemmas. Findings demonstrate that type of dilemma may affect the structure of moral reasoning and illustrate various stages of moral reasoning. (SLD)

The 45 tests described in this bibliography assess the moral development and values of populations at all age and grade levels (particularly target toward those above grade 7). Some of the instruments consist of questions that pose moral problems and respondents must select a solution. Several of the tests are concerned about professional ethics.…

Representing an attempt to document the basic assumptions of Kohlberg's cognitive-developmental theory of moral judgment, a 20-year longitudinal study was conducted. Assessed was the moral judgment development of 58 boys ages 10, 13, and 16 when the study began. At each of six testing times, subjects were individually interviewed on their…