The Psychology of Moral Development

A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy

A study was launched in 1969 among a nutritionally at-risk population in the Department of El Progreso Eastern Guatemala to determine if protein deficiency in infants and children delays mental development. It was designed as a clinical prospective trial in which subjects were exposed to either an high-calorie high-protein supplement Atole or a low-calorie supplement Fresco. Medical care was made available to both groups. Data were collected both longitudinally and through follow-up. This chapter focuses upon the longitudinal assessment and presents the methods used for developmental assessments conducted in infancy and the preschool years a review of published findings and the results of a recent reanalysis of data from those two early development periods. Subjects were drawn from two villages located in the department with the pool of potential subjects including all children aged 7 years or younger who lived in the villages at the time the study was initiated all children who moved into the villages during the course of the project and all children born in the villages between January 1 1969 and February 28 1977. In all 2393 children are included in the data set although the number of subjects for whom data are available on any given variable is considerably lower; sample sizes at each age for the tests of mental development ranged from 469 at six months to 857 at four years. Data from the Composite Infant Scale were analyzed using the mental and motor scores obtained at 6 15 and 24 months. A general linear model was used to analyze the data with treatment entered as a class variable and all analyses controlled for socioeconomic status (SES) sex and attendance. The preschool battery was first factor analyzed to reduce the large number of tests which would otherwise be conducted. Only tests considered to have minimally acceptable test-retest stability coefficients were therefore included in the analysis. A few moderately beneficial effects were found from supplementation with Atole with the effects strongest in children from the most needy families on the basis of SES composite score.

Early supplementary feeding and cognition: effects over two decades. Methodology and findings of the longitudinal study.

The nature of harm—and therefore moral judgment—may be misunderstood Rather than an objective matter of reason, we argue that harm should be redefined as an intuitively perceived continuum This r

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1088868317698288

The Theory of Dyadic Morality: Reinventing Moral Judgment by Redefining Harm:

Happy to help? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of performing acts of kindness on the well-being of the actor

Humans are extraordinarily prosocial. What inspires and reinforces a willingness to help others? Here we focus on the role of positive feelings. Drawing on functional accounts of positive emotion, which suggest that positive emotional states serve to alert actors to positive experiences and encourage similar action in the future, we summarize evidence demonstrating that positive feelings promote and reward prosocial behavior throughout development. Specifically, we highlight new and classic evidence from both child and adult research showing first, that various positive states prompt prosocial behavior, and second, prosocial action leads to positive states. We also consider the possibility of a positive feedback loop, wherein the emotional rewards of giving promote future prosociality.

Positive feelings reward and promote prosocial behavior.

Humans are extraordinarily prosocial, and research conducted primarily in North America indicates that giving to others is emotionally rewarding. To examine whether the hedonic benefits of giving represent a universal feature of human behavior, we extended upon previous cross-cultural examinations by investigating whether inhabitants of a small-scale, rural, and isolated village in Vanuatu, where villagers have little influence from urban, Western culture, survive on subsistence farming without electricity, and have minimal formal education, report or display emotional rewards from engaging in prosocial (vs. personally beneficial) behavior. In Study 1, adults were randomly assigned to purchase candy for either themselves or others and then reported their positive affect. Consistent with previous research, adults purchasing goods for others reported greater positive emotion than adults receiving resources for themselves. In Study 2, 2- to 5-year-old children received candy and were subsequently asked to engage in costly giving (sharing their own candy with a puppet) and non-costly giving (sharing the experimenter's candy with a puppet). Emotional expressions were video-recorded during the experiment and later coded for happiness. Consistent with previous research conducted in Canada, children displayed more happiness when giving treats away than when receiving treats themselves. Moreover, the emotional rewards of giving were largest when children engaged in costly (vs. non-costly) giving. Taken together, these findings indicate that the emotional rewards of giving are detectable in people living in diverse societies and support the possibility that the hedonic benefits of generosity are universal.

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Prosocial behavior leads to happiness in a small-scale rural society.

It is impossible to perceive who owns an object; this must be inferred. One way that children make such inferences is through a first possession bias—when two agents each use an object, children judge the object belongs to the one who used it first. Two experiments show that this bias does not result from children directly inferring ownership from first possession; the experiments instead support an alternative account according to which the first possession bias reflects children's historical reasoning. In Experiment 1, eighty-five 3- to 5-year-olds only based inferences on first possession when it was informative about the past. In Experiment 2, thirty-two 5-year-olds based ownership judgments on testimony about past contact, while disregarding testimony about future contact.

First possession, history, and young children's ownership judgments.

Ownership influences the permissibility of people's use of objects. Understanding ownership is therefore necessary for socially appropriate behavior and is an important part of children's social-cognitive development. Children are sophisticated in their reasoning about ownership early in development. They make a variety of judgments about ownership, including judgments about how ownership is acquired, who owns what, and ownership rights. Understanding how children reason about ownership can also inform broader questions about the nature and origins of ownership.

Young children's understanding of ownership

Whereas some evidence suggests that toddlers consider targets' deservingness when deciding whom to help, other research demonstrates that toddlers help indiscriminately. The present findings shed light on this discrepancy by demonstrating that although toddlers do exhibit selectivity in giving behaviors, their emotional responses are comparatively indiscriminate. Specifically, in Experiment 1, 20-month-olds (N = 64) were more likely to give preferred toys to prosocial versus antisocial puppets, and more likely to withhold toys from antisocial versus prosocial puppets. Experiment 2 (N = 64) ruled out low-level explanations for the effects observed in Experiment 1, demonstrating that toddlers do not show the same effects when puppets' toy preferences are unclear. Despite providing evidence for selectivity in giving behaviors, across both experiments, toddlers were happier after giving than before giving, regardless of what they gave or whom they gave to. These results reveal the possibility of a divergence in early prosociality: Toddlers' giving behaviors are responsive to recipient deservingness, but their after-the-fact emotional reactions are responsive to giving acts themselves. Results are discussed in terms of their relevance to the debate regarding whether toddlers' early prosocial behaviors are discriminate versus indiscriminate. (PsycINFO Database Record

Julia W. Van de Vondervoort

Papers

Positive feelings reward and promote prosocial behavior.

Prosocial behavior leads to happiness in a small-scale rural society.

First possession, history, and young children's ownership judgments.

Young children's understanding of ownership

Selectivity in Toddlers' Behavioral and Emotional Reactions to Prosocial and Antisocial Others.