factors influencing young children's use of motives and outcomes as moral criteria

7/27/2019 Factors Influencing Young Children's Use of Motives and Outcomes as Moral Criteria

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Factors Influencing Young Children's Use of Motives and Outcomes as Moral CriteriaAuthor(s): Sharon A. NelsonSource: Child Development, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Sep., 1980), pp. 823-829Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Society for Research in Child DevelopmentStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1129470 .Accessed: 19/05/2011 06:36

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Factors Influencing Young Children's Use ofMotives and Outcomes as Moral CriteriaSharon A. NelsonUniversityof Pittsburgh

NELSON, SHARON A. Factors nfluencingYoung Children'sUse of Motivesand Outcomes sMoralCriteria.CHILDDEVELOPMENT,980, 51, 823-829. Youngchildren'suse of motives andoutcomes as moral criteria was measured under 3 modes of story presentation(verbal only,verbal plus pictureswith the motive merely implied, and verbalplus pictureswith the motiveportrayedexplicitly). 4 stories combining positive and negative motives and outcomes werepresentedto the childrenin each of the 3 groups.Recall for the criticalstoryinformationwasalso assessed. Results supportedthese hypotheses: (1) that children as young as 3 years ofage can and do use motive information or makingmoraljudgmentswhen this information sexplicit, salient, and available; (2) that when motive and outcome have opposite valences,children tend to recall the story so as to make them congruent.The results are discussed interms of the influence of the young child's comprehension processes on recall and moraljudgments.

Piaget (1932) found a developmentaltrend in the preferred basis of moral judg-ments made by 6-10-year-old children in re-sponse to hypothetical situations. In childrenunder 9-10 years he found no clear preferencefor motives as the basis for judgments. Afterthe age of 10 years, judgments were consis-tently based on motive. However, in the samework, he pointed out that young children'stendency to base their judgments more on con-sequence information need not imply that theyare unaware of intentions. In fact, Piaget(1926, 1932) has observed that the conceptsof intention and motive emerge at about thesame time as the first "whys," that is, aroundthe age of 3-4 years. The present research wasundertaken to determine the conditions underwhich the moral judgments of 3-4-year-oldchildren would reflect their consideration anduse of motives, as well as outcomes.Recent investigators have been successfulin demonstrating the use of motives in ad-dition to outcomes in children as young as 6years of age. This has been achieved by de-parting from Piaget's method. Whereas Piagetused forced-choice situations, recent investiga-tions have presented single stories in whichmotives and outcomes are systematically varied

and have used quantitative response measures(e.g., Constanzo, Coie, Grumet, & Farnhill1973). Some researchers have also stated theactor's motive explicitly (e.g., Bearison &Isaacs1975). Some have increased the salience of theactor's motive by using videotaped situations(e.g., Chandler, Greenspan, & Barenboim1973) or by reversing the order in which themotive and outcome information is presented(e.g., Feldman, Klosson, Parsons, Rholes, &Ruble 1976; Nummedal & Bass 1976).Studies which have examined 3- and 4-

year-olds' use of motives report conflicting find-ings. Lyons-Ruth (Note 1) found no evidencethat these children differentiate between actorswith good versu's bad motives, but Keasey(1978) reports opposite findings. However, nooutcome information was presented to childrenin the Lyons-Ruth study, and the study re-ported by Keasey did not vary the outcome.Thus, it is not known whether the type of out-come affects young children's understandingand use of motives as moral criteria.The assumption underlying this researchis that young children do regard both motiveand outcome as relevant criteriafor moral judg-ments. However, procedures employed thus farhave not allowed young children to demon-

This article is based in part on a dissertation ubmitted to the Departmentof Psychology,Universityof Illinois,in partialfulfillmentof the requirements or the Ph.D. degree.The authorwould like to thank Carol Dweck, Ross Parke, Ann Brown, and Joseph Campionefor theirhelpful comments at several stages of the research;gratitudeis also expressedto CarlBaren-boim and Irene Frieze, who gave valuable criticismon earlier drafts of the manuscript.Theinterest and cooperationof the children and staff of participatingschools is also gratefullyacknowledged.Requestsfor reprintsshould be sent to: SharonA. Nelson, Departmentof Psy-chology, 405 Langley Hall, Universityof Pittsburgh,Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania15260.

[Child Development, 1980, 51, 823-829. ? 1980 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.0009-3920/80/5103-0023$01.00)


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824 Child Developmentstrate their understanding and use of these cri-teria. Young children may believe that motivesprovide information important for makingmoral judgments, yet fail to interpret or re-member accurately cues about the actor's mo-tive. They may also believe that the relation-ship between motive and outcome is logical(i.e., one implies the other). Children may,therefore, consider the motive as they haveunderstood it and not as it was presented. Itwas hypothesized that a mode of presentationwhich makes both motives and outcomes ex-plicit and salient and which keeps them avail-able at the time of judgment, would allowchildren as young as 3 years old to demon-strate their sensitivity to both these moral cri-teria.

In order to test the assumption, a seriesof pictures depicting the actor's motive, be-havior, and outcome were developed to accom-pany verbally presented stories. To compen-sate for the greater pictorial explicitness of out-comes relative to motives, additional cartoon-like drawings were made to portray the actor'smotive.Study 1MethodSUBJECTS

Subjects were 60 preschool children be-tween the ages of 3 and 4 years (mean = 3-4)and 30 second-grade children between the agesof 6 and 8 years (mean = 7-4). Approximatelyhalf of the children in each grade level were fe-males and half were males. These children,mostly white, were from a middle-class, urbanarea and participated with parental consent.MATERIALSStoriesTwo levels of motive and two levels ofoutcome were combined factorially to makefour versions of a story. In each story versiona boy acting from a good or bad motive pur-posely threw a ball toward a friend, resultingin a good or bad outcome. This situation waschosen because "throwing a ball" was consis-tently regarded by children in pilot studies asa neutral act (see Lyons-Ruth, Note 1). Mo-tive descriptions always preceded outcome de-scriptions, and the actor's overt behavior wasthe same in all versions. The motive and out-come levels were as follows.

Motive statements.--(1) Good motive:This boy was playing with a ball; his frienddid not have anything to play with. He wanted

to throw the ball to his friend so they couldplay catch together with the ball. (2) Bad mo-tive: This boy was playing with a ball; he wasvery mad at his friend that day. He wantedto throw the ball at his friend so he could hithim on purpose.

Outcome statements.-(1) Good outcome:The boy threw the ball. His friend caught theball and was happy to play with it. (2) Badoutcome: The boy threw the ball. His frienddid not catch the ball; the ball hit his friendon the head and made him cry.Story example.-This boy was playingwith a ball; his friend did not have anythingto play with. He wanted to throw the ball sohe and his friend could play catch togetherwith the ball. He threw the ball. His frienddid not catch the ball; the ball hit his friendon the head and made him cry.

PicturesIn order to alleviate memory constraintsand to examine the effects of motive salience,two sets of black-and-white line drawings wereconstructed to accompany the information pre-sented in each of the four stories describedabove. Each set contained a series of 25-cm X23-cm drawings illustrating the motive, the be-havior, and the outcome in each story. The twosets of drawings differ in the manner in whichthey convey the motive of the actor. In thefirst set, positive and negative motives aremerely implied by the actor's facial expressions.In the second set, positive and negative mo-tives are conveyed explicitly by connecting tothe actor's head cartoon-like representations ofthe goal which he intends to achieve (see fig.1).RESPONSE SCALE

Children who judged the actor to be goodwere required to make judgments of goodnessby pointing to one of three smiling faces whosediameter increased in size from 5.5 to 7.5 cmso that judgments could be represented from"a little bit good" to "very good." A similarseries of frowning faces was-used to representthe judgments from "a little bit bad" to "verybad." At the small end of each series there wasa 4.5-cm-diameter neutral face representingthe judgment "just okay," (a term used by themajority of children in the pilot work to con-vey the neutral judgment). By using this as aneutral endpoint common to both positive andnegative ratings, the two scales were combinedto form a seven-point scale for all judgmentsranging from "very bad" (1) to "very good"


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826 Child DevelopmentTABLE 1

MEAN RATINGOFACTOR'SGOODNESS/BADNESS N STUDY 1 AS A FUNCTIONOFSUBJECTS'GE,LEVEL FMOTIVE,ND EVEL FOUTCOME3-Year-Olds 7-Year-Olds(N= 60) (N= 30)

Good Bad Good BadMotive Motive Motive MotiveGoodoutcome............ 6.55 2.27 6.20 3.46Bad outcome........... 4.17 1.60 4.47 1.56

the judgment. An age x motive x outcomeinteraction, F(1,84) = 3.54, p < .051, wasanalyzed for age trends because the older chil-dren were expected to show greater use of bothmotive and outcome than the younger children.Indeed, the motive x outcome interaction wassignificant for the 3-year-olds, F (1,59) = 5.52,p < .03, but not for the 7-year-olds, F < 1(see table 1).Of interest for present purposes was thequestion whether the mode of presentation af-fected children's use of motive and outcomeinformation in making moral judgments of themain character. Contrary to expectations, onlythe influence of outcome varied significantlywith the mode of presentation of story infor-

mation (presentation X outcome interaction,F[2,84] = 4.60, p < .01). A more detailedanalysis was conducted using Scheffe's proce-dure for post hoc comparisons among means.When the motive information was explicitlypictured, good and bad outcomes had a greatereffect on judgments than when it was implicitlypictured or not pictured at all, p < .01.The increased effectiveness of outcomeinformation across story presentation modes isdue to the increased use of this informationwhen the motive is bad (mode of presentationx motive X outcome interaction, F[2,84] =3.06, p < .05). That is, whereas children showsubstantial use of outcome information in the

good-motive stories under all modes of presen-tation, only in the picture presentations do theyshow use of information about outcomes whenthe motive is bad, F(2,84) = 9.67, p < .01.The form of this interaction can be seen infigure 2.RECALL

To obtain an estimate of reliability in cod-ing the accuracy of children's recall of motiveand outcome information, a second observerindependently coded responses for approxi-mately one-third of the sample. Rater agree-ment was 97%.Recall frequencies were com-

pared with chance levels: only the motive re-call frequencies for 3-year-olds in the verbal-only conditions did not depart significantlyfrom binomial chance.Errors made in recalling the valence ofmotive and outcome information were analyzedin a 2 (age) x 3 (story presentation) X 2(motive) x 2 (outcome) repeated measuresanalysis of variance. As expected, age emergedas a significant main effect. Three-year-old chil-dren made more errors in recalling motives andoutcomes (mean = 0.408) than 7-year-oldchildren (mean = 0.158), F(1,84) = 12.43, p< .001. Analyses of variance performed sepa-rately on motive errors and outcome errorsindicated that, while there was no effect of

story presentation on outcome recall errors, re-call of motives was significantly affected,F (2,84) = 5.38, p < .006. As expected, fewererrors occurred in recalling motive valences inthe picture presentations than in the verbal-only presentation.It was hypothesized that the younger chil-dren might assume a necessary correspondenceto exist between motive and outcome and that,when presented with stories in which this in-formation was incongruent, they would tendto distort motives and outcomes so as to makethem congruent. Because of discrepancies be-tween the variances in some of the cells, as-sumptions appropriate to parametric analysescould not be made; therefore, nonparametricanalyses were undertaken. Separate series ofWilcoxin matched pairs signed-ranks tests(Siegel 1956) were performed on the recalldata from each age group. Comparison of mo-tive and outcome errors indicated, as expected,that the 3-year-olds made relatively more errorsrecalling motive valences than outcome va-lences when this information was conflicting(Z = 1.72, p = .05) than when it was con-gruent (Z = -60). The congruency or incon-gruency of valence information had no effecton the pattern of recall errors made by 7-year-olds.


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Sharon A. Nelson 827PICTURE-MOTIVEXPLICITPICTURE-MOTIVEMPUCITVERBALONLY

x0U--00z

z

(..)

LL

Z

I--

Z0-IJ

CI.13:

GOOD GOOD MOTIVE BAD MOTIVE765432

BADBAD GOOD BAD GOOD

OUTCOME OUTCOMEFIG.2.-Mean ratingof actor'sgoodness/badnessn study 1 according o level of motive andoutcomein each story presentation.

DiscussionThe unexpected finding that, for 3-year-olds in the verbal-only presentation group, mo-tive rather than outcome had the more potenteffect on their judgment prompted a closer ex-amination of judgment data from individualsubjects. Inspection of these data suggests dis-tinct patterns of judgment responses. The pre-dominant pattern, shown by 40% of this sam-ple, was to rate the actor negatively wheneverthere was at least one negative cue, regardlessof its source. The second pattern, shown by28.33% of the sample, was to ignore the out-come and to rate the actor according to thevalence of the presented motives. The remain-ing children showed the following patterns:ratings that depended equally on the valence ofmotive and outcome (1.67%); ratings that var-ied only with the valence of the outcome(6.67%); positive ratings whenever at least onepositive cue was presented (10%); and randomresponses (13.33%).A very large percentage of the preschool-ers seem to give more emphasis to the valence,

especially negative valence, of the cue ratherthan to its source (motive or outcome). It hasbeen reported that children develop the con-cept of bad before the concept of good (Hill& Hill 1977; McKechnie 1971; Piaget 1932;Rhine, Hill, &Wandruff 1967). In formulating

a moral judgment, children may be more alertto cues regarding badness of any kind. Sincechildren commonly define good as the absenceof bad (Hill & Hill 1977), positive judgmentsmay tend to be made only when no negativecue is encountered. Thus it may be that thefirst negative cue-motive or outcome--en-countered by the preschooler in the story sit-uation will be sufficient to establish a negativejudgment.Study 2

In Study 1, when the 3-year-olds in theverbal-only condition rated the actors in thebad-motive stories, their judgments reflectedthe bad motive but not the outcome whichfollowed. Is it possible that motive may havebeen utilized as a basis for judgment simplybecause it was always the first cue encoun-tered? If preschoolers are really more con-cerned with negative valence than with thesource of the cue, then reversing the order ofpresentation of motive and outcome within thestories should lead to judgments which disre-gard motives whenever bad outcomes are en-countered. This is expected to be so, especiallyfor the verbal presentations of the stories.Therefore, a second study was undertaken toinvestigate the possibility that the emphasisgiven to motive by the 3-year-olds in study 1


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828 Child DevelopmentTABLE 2

MEAN RATING OF ACTOR'S GOODNESS/BADNESS IN STUDY 2 ACCORDINGTO PRESENTATION MODE, OUTCOME, AND MOTIVE

GOOD OUTCOME BAD OUTCOMEGood Bad Good BadPRESENTATION Motive Motive Motive Motive

Verbalonly ............. 6.11 3.56 2.67 1.78Picture-motivemplicit.... 7.00 2.11 2.33 1.11Picture-motive explicit. . ... 7.00 3.56 4.22 1.11reflects a confounding of information about thevalence of the cues with the order of presen-tation of the source of the cues within thestories.SUBJECTS AND PROCEDURE

Twenty-seven preschool boys and girls(mean age = 3-8) participated as subjects inthe second study. Children were randomly as-signed to one of the three presentation groups.The materials and the procedure were iden-tical with those of study 1. In all stories andpresentation modes, description of the outcomepreceded description of the motive.RESULTS AND DisCUSSIONJudgmentsMoral judgment ratings were analyzed ina 3 (presentation mode) x 2 (outcome) x 2(motive) repeated measures analysis of vari-ance. Table 2 presents the mean judgmentsmade by children in study 2. As in study 1,good outcomes were rated more positively(mean = 4.89) than bad outcomes (mean =2.20); F(1,24) = 102.06, p < .001 (estimated02 = .250). Likewise, good motives were ratedmore positively (mean = 4.89) than bad mo-tives (mean = 2.20); F'(1,24) = 144.50, p


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Sharon A. Nelson 829lence, motive, or outcome. This finding is con-sistent with Piaget's (1932) observation thatyounger children made judgments relyingeither on motive or on outcome and that thesame child might judge sometimes by outcomeand sometimes by motive. Rather than viewingsuch a child's behavior as inconsistent, thepresent research suggests that it may reflectconsistent application of a judgmental strategyinfluenced by the child's concepts of "good"and "bad."

It is noteworthy that in the second study,where outcome preceded motive in the stories,the effect of motive on moral judgments wasnot less than that of outcomes. This suggeststhat while cue valence does influence the pre-schooler's moral judgment, motive is influentialin its own right as a source of relevant infor-mation. The finding that many children's judg-ments reflected the use of motive alone sup-ports this notion.

The finding that the 3-year-olds tended torecall stories containing conflicting motive andoutcome information so as to make these cuescongruent is in line with the observations ofprevious researchers (e.g., Berndt & Berndt1975; Piaget 1932) that young children assumesome logical and necessary connection betweenmotives and outcomes. They may assume, forexample, that a bad outcome necessarily im-plies a bad motive and, therefore, encode theactor's motive as bad. Even when the storyinformation is made explicit, children may in-fer that the actor's motive must have changed.It was not uncommon for children, when ques-tioned about their judgments, to remark thatthe actor whose presented motive was incon-gruent with the effected outcome had "changedhis mind" (i.e., changed the goal he sought toachieve). The fact that these children soughtto justify their evaluations by the actor'smotiveas well as by the outcome indicates an aware-ness that the motivation for behavior shouldbe considered.

In conclusion, the results of the presentresearch suggest that making a moral judgmentrequires understanding of the evaluative con-cepts (i.e., "good," "bad") to be applied. Alsorequired is comprehension of the motives orgoals involved (e.g., "sharing," "helping,""hurting"). A child must also be able to recog-nize and interpret the interrelationshipbetweenactions, motives, goals, and outcomes in orderto make evaluative judgments. The develop-ment of these competencies deserves furtherinvestigation if we are to advance our present

understandingof the beliefs children haveabout purposefulactions and social relation-ships.Reference Note1. Lyons-Ruth, K. Factors affecting the valuejudgments of preschool children. Paper pre-sented at the biennialmeeting of the Societyfor Research n Child Development,New Or-leans, March1977.ReferencesBearison,D., & Isaacs, L. Productiondeficiencyinchildren's moral judgments. DevelopmentalPsychology,1975, 11, 732-737.Berndt,T., & Berndt,E. Children'suse of motivesand intentionalityin person perception andmoraljudgment.ChildDevelopment,1975,46,904-912.Chandler, M.; Greenspan, L.; & Barenboim,C.Judgmentsof intentionalityn responseto vid-eotaped and verbally presenteddilemmas:themediumis the message. Child Development,1973, 44, 315-320.Constanzo,P.; Coie, J.; Grumet,J.; & Farnhill,D.A reexaminationof the effects of intent and

consequences on children'smoral judgments.Child Development,1973, 44, 154-161.Feldman, N.; Klosson,E.; Parsons,J.; Rholes,W.;&Ruble,D. Orderof informationpresentationand children'smoraljudgments.Child Devel-opment,1976, 47, 556-559.Hill, K., & Hill, C. Children'sconcepts of goodand bad behavior. Psychological Reports,1977, 41, 955-958.Keasey,C. B. Children'sdevelopingawarenessandusage of intentionalityand motives. In C. B.Keasey (Ed.), NebraskaSymposiumon Mo-tivation. Vol. 25. Lincoln: Universityof Ne-braskaPress,1978.McKechnie,R. BetweenPiaget'sstages: a study inmoraldevelopment.BritishJournalof Educa-tional Psychology,1971, 41, 213-217.Nummedal,S., &Bass, S. Effects of salience of in-tention and consequence on children'smoraljudgments. DevelopmentalPsychology, 1976,12, 475-476.Piaget, J. The languageand thought of the child.New York:Harcourt,Brace, 1926.Piaget, J. The moral judgmentof the child. Lon-don: KeganPaul, 1932.Rhine, R.; Hill, S.; & Wandruff,S. Evaluativere-sponsesof preschoolchildren. Child Develop-ment, 1967, 38, 1035-1042.Siegel, S. Nonparametric tatistics for the behav-ioralsciences. New York:McGraw-Hill,1956.

factors influencing young children's use of motives and outcomes as moral criteria

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