Children's Moral Reasoning about Self and Others

In two studies, we examined children's reasoning about prosocial moral dilemmas in which the cost of helping and/or the identity of the story protagonist (self versus a third-person other) were varied. In Experiment 1, preschool children who responded to stories in which they themselves were characters verbalized more hedonistic reasoning, used less reasoning in which they were oriented toward the other's needs, and were less likely to say that they should help the needy other than were children who reasoned about third-person others. In Experiment 2, identity of the protagonist, cost of helping for the protagonist (a low cost condition was added), and age of the subject (preschool versus first grade) were varied. For children in the high cost condition (but not the low cost condition), the pattern of results was similar to that in Experiment 1. Age differences in judgments were somewhat greater when the cost of helping was low.