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,…

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…

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,…

Five- to 13-year-old European American children ("N" = 76) predicted characters' decisions, emotions, and obligations in prosocial moral dilemmas. Across age, children judged that characters would feel more positive emotions helping an unfamiliar child from the racial in-group versus out-group (African American), happier ignoring the…

"Interpersonal" rejection and "intergroup" exclusion in childhood reflect different, but complementary, aspects of child development. Interpersonal rejection focuses on individual differences in personality traits, such as wariness and being fearful, to explain bully-victim relationships. In contrast, intergroup exclusion focuses on how in-group…

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…

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…

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%…

Although there has been extensive research on children's moral knowledge about lying and truth-telling and their actual lie- or truth-telling behaviors, research to examine the relation between these two is extremely rare. This study examined one hundred and twenty 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds' moral understanding of lies and their actual lying…

The relation between children's lie-telling and their social and cognitive development was examined. Children (3-8 years) were told not to peek at a toy. Most children peeked and later lied about peeking. Children's subsequent verbal statements were not always consistent with their initial denial and leaked critical information revealing their…

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…

Four-, 5-, and 7-year-olds (N = 60) listened to vignettes featuring characters that wanted to do actions that conflicted with parental rules. Desires included behaviors associated with the personal domain: friend, activity, and clothing choice. Scenarios involving moral rules served as a comparison. Children predicted and explained characters'…

Two studies investigated whether young children are selectively prosocial toward others, based on the others' moral behaviors. In Study 1 (N = 54), 3-year-olds watched 1 adult (the actor) harming or helping another adult. Children subsequently helped the harmful actor less often than a third (previously neutral) adult, but helped the helpful and…

Two studies investigated the role of children's moral motivation and sympathy in prosocial behavior. Study 1 measured other-reported prosocial behavior and self- and other-reported sympathy. Moral motivation was assessed by emotion attributions and moral reasoning following hypothetical transgressions in a representative longitudinal sample of…