Abstract
Previous studies have focused on the impact of teacher as an important authority in children’s life witnessing different kinds of behavior on children’s moral emotion judgment and attribution. And the results indicated that this kind of witness could lead some changes for children’s moral emotion judgment and attribution to different actors, though also some inconformity existed in these results. However, some limitations still exist. For one thing, some researchers have proved that even preschool children could accept the status of their peers as authorities. But whether this kind of authority could have impact on children’s moral emotion judgment and attribution, we have no ideas. For another thing, although some studies have found that when a teacher witnessed an actor’s(such as victimizer’s) behavior, children’s moral emotion judgment to this kind of actor could have some alteration in contrast to the condition no people witnessed. Whether this effect was due to the authority status of the teacher or the interruption of an unexpected person, this question should also be considered.
In this study, we chose teacher as adult authority and monitor in class as peer authority, and also chose an ordinary student in class as non-authority, adopting a 3(types of behavior contexts)×3 (types of witnesses) between subject design, with 90 7~8 aged children as participants, aiming at inspecting children’s moral emotion judgment and attribution to different behavior contexts in different authority witnesses condition. As the result showed, the main effect of behavior contexts was significant. Comparing to the victimizing context and the context of failing to act prosocially, children tended to judge the actor’s emotion would be happier in prosocial context. Besides, there was also a significant interaction between types of behavior contexts and the types of witnesses. Subjects tended to judge the actor would feel unhappier when adult-authority( vs. peer-authority & non-authority) witnessed actor’s behavior in victimizing context, while they tended to judge the actor would feel happier when adult-authority( vs. peer-authority & non-authority) witnessed actor’s behavior in prosocial context. In adult-authority witness condition, children’s score of moral emotion judgment displayed significant difference. The score was highest in prosocial context, but was lowest in victimizing context. However, in peer-authority and non-authority witness condition, there was no significant difference in children’s score of moral emotion judgment to different contexts. Children’s attribution of moral emotion was different in different authority witnesses condition. Children tended to adopt reward/punishment-orientation more in adult-authority witness condition than in other two authority witnesses conditions. While there were no significant differences among three authority witnesses conditions for other orientations.
The results illustrated that teacher played an important role in children’s development of moral emotion and moral motivation. Monitor, as a peer authority, witnessing actors’ behavior hardly had impact on children’ moral emotion judgment. Although 7~8 years old children regarded the monitor as one kind of authority, but the impact of this kind of authority was not so great as teacher, who made and carried out the rule from kindergarten stage on.
The outcome also made further examination to previous studies, demonstrating that teacher onlooker’s influences on children’s moral emotion judgment and attribution should be due to the authority status of teacher, but not the interruption of an unexpected person.
Key words
behavior contexts /
authority witnesses /
moral emotion judgment /
moral emotion attribution
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Effects of different witnesses on children’s moral emotion judgment and attribution[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2015, 38(4): 876-882
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