Dissertation

Moral-emotional understanding in middle childhood: Development, sensitivity to story content, sex differences, and social behavior

Lyon, Susan Marie

2001

Overview

The current thesis explored children's understanding of the emotions experienced by individuals involved in victimization situations through three studies. The studies utilized a task in which children were presented with a story about one child victimizing another, and then asked how each of the characters felt and why they felt that way. The first study focused on developmental changes in moral-emotional understanding in a group of children seen longitudinally. As hypothesized, children showed a major shift with age in their attributions of and reasoning about the emotions of both victimizers and victims. Whereas at age six and a half most children attributed a positive emotion to the victimizer and justified their attributions with reference to the material outcome of the act, by age nine and a half most attributed negative emotions to the victimizer and focused on moral considerations. Over time the participants also showed an increased tendency to attribute anger rather than sadness to the victim, and to justify their attributions with reference to social considerations. The second study explored the effects of both the child's sex and of story content involving different types of aggression on nine- to ten-year-old children's attributions to story characters. Sex differences were found in children's attributions to both victimizers and victims. Girls attributed negative emotions to victimizers and focused on moral considerations more often than boys, who were more likely to focus on hedonistic concerns. Girls also attributed more sadness to victims than boys who were more likely to attribute anger. Story content affected children's attributions to victims. Victims of relational aggression were expected to feel sad and focus on social considerations more often than victims of physical aggression and theft. The third study investigated the relationship between children's behavioral tendencies and their moral-emotional understanding. Fourth grade children rated by their teachers as highly aggressive were more likely to expect victimizers to feel happy because of hedonistic concerns. Fourth grade children exhibiting more depressive symptoms in school were more likely to have attributed anger to story victims when they were in kindergarten.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Developmental psychology
• ISBN: 0493309551, 9780493309552