Children's Judgements of Emotion Following Moral Transgression

Abstract

The aim of this research was to examine contradictions between three published accounts of age-related changes in children's judgements of the emotion experienced by a wrongdoer: accounts by Barden, Zelco, Duncan, and Masters (1980), Nunner-Winkler and Sodian (1988), and Harter and Whitesell (1989). We report three studies involving children aged between 4 and 10 years who watched dolls enacting scenes involving a wrongdoer and then judged how that doll felt, and one involving adults who made an emotion attribution for story characters. Contrary to Harter and Whitesell, many children did judge a wrongdoer to feel happy, but contrary to Barden et al. and to Nunner-Winkler and Sodian, the incidence of happy judgements did not decline with age, and they remained even among adults. Contrary to Barden et al., "happy" judgements were no less common when children believed their teacher was going to see their answers. Contrary to Harter and Whitesell and to Barden et al., judgements of "sad" rather than "scared" were given by some young children. The developmental picture remains unclear.