Mental Time Travel and Development of Morality Flashcards
What is Mental Time Travel?
What makes humans unique?
many authors argue that different cognitive skills are the ones that make us uniquely human, that differentiates us from other animal species. some authors argue that culture is what makes humans unique, while others believe language makes humans unique. some authors believe its actually mental time travel, which is the ability to travel back and forwards in time in our heads.
So what is this ability?
MTT involves going back in time to remember a pattern or past event, which is known as episodic memory. MTT also allows us to travel forward in time into the future, which is when we rely on our future thinking to imagine and think about a future event.
MTT can be defined in terms of two main features, the content (when remembering or imagine a past/future event we are bring our head the content of these episodes) and the sense of time (allows us to distinguish from the present, past and future).
Episodic Memory (Past)
so there are different types of memories, but there are two main categories in which those memories fall into. one is the non-declarative memory and the other is the declarative memory.
non-declarative memory is stimulus-driven; a particular stimulus in the environment or a cue is going to trigger the reproduction or the record of memory and therefore the reproduction of an action. an example of procedural memory is priming, conditioning, and non-associative learning.
declarative memory is voluntary access; its not language-dependent, we dont need to be able to use language to recall anything related to declarative memory. two types of memories for this, episodic and semantic. semantic memory involves remembering facts about the world, whereas episodic memory involves personal past events and remembering what, where and when the event happened as well as phenomenological components (the conscious awareness that allow us to distinguish that memory happened in our past and that memory is part of our own past).
this phenomenological aspect can only be accessed through language. the way that humans know that we are remembering a past event is because we are able to communicate about it.
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so psychologists must come up with a test to allow them to assess the ability of episodic memory;
Infants - can they recall events that happened to them? Deferred Imitation (e.g., Meltzoff, 1985, 1995 & Bauer, 1997) is the ability to imitate a previously-seen behaviour hours or days later. The experimenter demonstrates a novel use of an unfamiliar toy. After a delay, infants are given the toy. If the infants display the novel behaviour more than infants in a control group, they must remember the action they observed earlier. What Meltzoff found was that infants of 9mnths, 24hrs later they can imitate naturally occurring behaviours and those that are arbitrary, such as pressing a button to make a beeping sound. 14mth olds can imitate behaviours after even more time has passed, and will imitate unusual activities, such as viewing an adult press their forehead on a panel to make a light go on up to 4mths after seeing an adult do this. Thus, at this age, events are represented in long-term memory and can be accessed months later.
Young Children - autobiographical memories
Simcock & Hayne (2002)
Magic shrinking machine; in goes big toy, out comes identical small toy. later asked to describe what happened, identify pictures, and re-enact the event (3 measures).
What they found was that youngest groups recalled less than older groups. longer delays led to worse recall. differences between the three measures. worst recall on verbal task, best on re-enactments; used words only known at the original session to describe the task.
Conclusion; children have memories of early events, but may not have the language skills and knowledge to encode them.
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a paradigm that has been successfully used in animal research as a critical part time test, testing episodic memory.
This experiment was first done by Clayton and colleagues, and it was tested in scrub jays. they tested if animals could remember what, where and when something happened. they referred this to episodic-like memory because this conscious aspect was not possible to be tested.
An experiment to compare this study in apes in a similar paradigm;
(Martin-Ordas et al. 2010; Martin-Ordas et al. 2017, Matin-Ordas & Atance, 2019)
adopted this what, where and when paradigm for 4yrs with humans and great apes.
what - two types of items (perishable food; frozen juice and non-perishable food; grapes (for humans used raisins)).
where - they had a table with three different locations/boxes
when - 2 types of trials; 5 minutes and 1hr
After 5mins, both types of food are available (frozen juice and grape) and expect subjects to choose their favourite food because it hasn’t melted yet. but after 1hr the frozen juice so the grape is only available to them to eat.
Results; after 5mins great apes have a strong preference for the frozen food, but after an hour they change that preference to grapes more often. positive evidence that apes can remember what, where and when something happened. with children and adults after 3 mins they choose the frozen juice and also after 1hr.
so is it that humans dont have episodic memory? or this test is not testing episodic memory?
How episodic memory contributes to future thinking or planning
episodic (like) memory in tool-use paradigms [memory for the future]
this is a comparative study, and the reason why this is presented in this comparative research is because developmental and comparative psychologists face the same problem (they have subjects that have not fully developed language skills to express this phenomenological component)
if a lecturer asks to you draw your car dashboard you may draw something vague as you were unexpectedly asked and were not prepared (retrospective planning - using episodic memory). however, if you were asked last week to draw the dashboard for this week then your drawing will be much clearer and concise (prospective planning - using semantic memory).
They argue that the reason why you are better in the last condition is because in the first one, you had to go back to your memory from the last time you saw the dashboard of your car.
how do you translate this into an experiment for children and great apes?
(Martin-Ordas, Atance & Call, 2014)
the equivalent of the first condition is that a reward is to of your reach, so you need to get the reward.
the equivalent of the memory of the dashboard was translated into hiding the location of two tools in two different boxes in two different locations. the subjects will have to remember which of these two boxes the correct tool (the long one) is going to be hidden.
This is how the retrospective planning condition works, they did not tell them they are going to be asked to remember the location of the tools. they hide the tools in the two boxes and once completed , they show them the task.
In the prospective planning condition, they reverse events so they know which tool they need to solve the reward.
This was tested in great apes and children. great apes had no problem selecting the tool they needed to solve the problem regardless of the prospective or retrospective condition. for remembering the location of the tool, there is a significant difference between the perspective and retrospective condition. so great apes remember better when they are presented first with the problem. for the children, 4yr olds have no problem to remember where the correct tool was hidden in both conditions, for the 3yr olds they perform better in the prospective condition. what is more interesting is that the performance of the great apes resembles the performance of the 3yr olds. so there is a developmental pattern - 3yr olds are not as great as 4yr olds. evidence that this is a good test for assessing episodic memory.
Future Thinking
how do we build the image of a future event?
we rely on two memory systems; episodic memory as we need those images to create that image of the future, this is why many authors argue episodic memory has evolved. we also need semantic memory as we need to know general facts of what we already know from the past to support the events in the future.
we also need working memory as it is the only system that allows us to hold all this information in place.
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how do we measure future-oriented cognition?
(Tulving 1985, Suddendorf & Corballis 2007)
criteria to show future thinking in a test:
use of single trials
• to avoid repeated exposure to the same stimulus–reward relationships
• to demonstrate memory of specific event
use of novel problems
• to avoid relevant learning histories
• to demonstrate cognitive processes
use of different temporal⁄spatial contexts for the crucial future-directed action
• to avoid cuing
• to demonstrate long-term memory
use of problems from different domains
• to avoid specific behavioral predispositions
• to demonstrate flexibility
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The ‘Spoon test’ Methodology:
a classic paradigm which is based on Tulbins description of Estonian tale in which he explains that there is a little girl who goes to bed at night and dreams she is in a party and there’s chocolate cake but she doesn’t have a spoon to eat the cake. so the day after when she goes to bed, she brings a spoon with her just in case she has the same dream. bringing the spoon is an example of future thinking.
So how do we translate this into an experiment with children?
Suddendorf and his colleagues presented children with a box and inside contains stickers. the children see the experimenter opening the box 3 times with a triangular key. the experimenter then pretends that the tool broke, they children then go to the tool room (B) as after 15mins they are offered tools to choose from. when they go back to the original room (A), the question is whether they will pick the correct tool to open the box, which in this case should be the triangular key.
The results is that 4yr olds outperform 3yr olds in selecting the correct tool, however this doesn’t tell us the whole story. as it could be that 3yr olds are failing not because they fail at planning for a future event but because they simply don’t know how to solve the task. to rule this out, the authors say they presented the tools and the task in the same room with no temporal delay between the presentation of the tools and the task, then children had to select the correct tool. what they found was there was no significant differences between the two ages of children. the experimenters could then conclude that 3yr olds failed because they failed to foresee the future and plan accordingly.
Limitations;
- are they really thinking about a future event?
- if planning, is this planning based on episodic memory?
- if planning, is there an anticipation of a future need?
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children cache toys for future use;
a second paradigm borrowed from animal research. it was first done with birds but adapted for use with children by Atance and his colleagues. they tested 3 to 5yr olds where they deprived them from the opportunity to play with toys and determined if they couldnt anticipate the future need for them to play with the toys. so similar to the experiment, children visited two rooms 4 times in a row. after these 4 children had consecutive experiences, children were brought into a third room and were told they would be coming back to the lab to visit these two rooms when they were a year older. after this, they were shown a box with toys and they were to decide where to put them the next time they came back to the lab. its important to mention that in one of the rooms there were toys and the other room didn’t. so the question was whether the children will put the toys in the room that had none to avoid the boredom.
the results were that 4 and 5yr olds, but not 3yr olds, could place the toys in the room with no toys. there was also a trend to see that older kids perform better than younger children. this was evidence that children plan for the future. although there are some limitations.
limitations;
- children could just be using a heuristic (e.g., balance the content of the rooms)
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planning for physiological needs;
third paradigm which adult humans struggle with.
Atance and his colleagues aspects of future thinking in children. they brought 3 to 5yr olds to the lab. they had two groups and an experimental group that they made thirsty by giving them pretzels to eat and a control group that was not given pretzels to eat so they not thirsty. they were then told they were going to come back to the lab today after and choose between two food items (water or pretzels) to have the day after when they came back to the lab.
what was pretty surprising was that 3, 4 and 5yr olds chose the water for the day after in the experimental group. the authors interpreted this as the pressing need of being thirsty was overwhelmingly taking over the ability to think about the future. this study has been replicated in adults and other studies with children which show they seem to struggle to plan for future desires for physiological states. this finding makes it difficult to put together all the previous findings that were shown before.
novelty aspects and limitations:
physiological states but do children understand that physiological states change across time?
How do children know that the same conditions are not going to be repeated “tomorrow”?
Development of Moral Thought
INTUITIONS:
We all have strong intuitions about the morality of actions. And yet there are many open questions:
•Where do those intuitions come from?
•On what basis do we make our judgments of morality?•How does the ability to make those judgments emerge in childhood?
•How does it lead to actions?
•How can a group of individuals all believe they are acting correctly and morally but nonetheless do very different things in the same situation?
ORIGINS OF MORAL THOUGHT:
2 contrasting views
•Young children have some kind of inherent moral nature. e.g. Shawshank Rosol proposed that young children are intrinsically good . he believed that young children are pure in their heart and mind and would always behave in morally appropriate ways if not for the corrupting influences of society.
•Young children must learn about morality from their social and cultural experiences
EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE:
•Children are not intrinsically good or bad.
•Humans have certain moral sense because it has had adaptive value
•Empathy and sharing conferred a selective advantage among our species. e.g. social grooming.
3 COMPONENTS:
Different ways of characterising the psychological basis of moral thought. Developmental research has centered on 3 components:
1.Deontological Moral Judgments (Cognitive component). morality refers to a set of prescriptive norms about how individuals ought to treat one another, including concerns with fairness, others welfare, equality and justice.
2.Morality as Empathy (Affective component). emphasises the focus for sympathy, compassion and empathy which are viewed as the motivations for prosocial and altruistic behaviour. how these emotions emerge and change overtime.
3.Prosocial Obligations (Behavioral component). prosocial behaviour includes sharing and donating resources, cooperating, comforting others and volunteering to help another without benefit to the self. the emergence of cooperation requires specific mechanisms that balance the organisms self-interest with concern and respect for others.
COGNITIVE COMPONENT
a wide range of researchers shared a belief that investigating the building blocks of morality is essential for understanding more moral development. research on the evolutionary basis for morality is most often focused on the behavioural mechanisms to explain how such moral emotions and behaviours contribute to survival. we have started to use functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography to see how, for example, emotions and moral judgements are underpinned by neurological responses.
Going to focus on two theories on moral reasoning,
Piaget's Stages of Moral Reasoning: he intended for his model to be incorporated into his broad comprehensive theory of the stages of cognitive development. He argued that moral thought is not a separated cognitive domain, but it is related to reasoning. According to Piaget, some patterns of moral reasoning are simply unavailable to children until they reach a relevant stage of moral development. He proposed 3 stages of moral development which roughly corresponds to his stages of preoperational, concrete, operational and formal operational. Premoral Stage (primary stage) - up to 4yrs old - reasoning about rules; there is no explicit awareness of rules, no use of moral principles or notions of justice. simply playing for the fun of the activity. Heteronomous Stage - 4 to 10yrs - rules are seen as unchanging and external, like physical laws. Judgements of culpability are based on the act's consequences rather than the actor's intentions. there is little sense of what punishment is appropriate for what degree of transgression. Start to mature cognitively which allows them to transition to the autonomous stage. Autonomous Stage - 10 to 11yrs and older - rules are seen as human agreements that can be changed if all parties consent. Judgments of culpability are based in part on intentions and punishment should be appropriate to the severity of the transgression.
Consequences Outweigh Intentions:
Piaget (1932/1965)
The most interesting manipulation involved in scenarios in which the characters intentions did not match the magnitude of consequences resulting from his actions. Piaget thought to investigate children’s current stages. one of the manipulations he used was where intentions did not move onto the consequences
see a boy in green shirt and called by his mum, so he opens the door and a lot of glasses fall to the floor and break. Then you see another boy in a blue shirt who was told not to reach for the jar but the boy still does it and he breaks one glass.
Therefore the child participants are asked who deserves more punishment? young children tend to say the boy in the green shirt should be punished more because they focus on the outcome. in the heteronomous stage children ignore the intentions and focus on the consequences as opposed to children in autonomous stage. in the autonomous stage, children focus on the negative intentions (boy in blue shirt who wasn’t supposed to get the jar), therefore they believe the boy in the blue shirt should be punished more.
Evaluating Piaget’s Account:
another interesting aspect is how we can distinguish morality from conventions. young children have more difficulty thinking about the kind of arbitrary patterns and rules typical of most games than they do about non-arbitrary functional patterns. for example, it makes sense to them that one puts on socks first before putting on shoes. however, they find it difficult when a game is played clockwise or anti-clockwise. Piagets attempts to link children’s understanding and use of game rules to morality faces a deeper problem. Moral laws are very different from social convention. social conventions are usually arbitrary rules that are jointly agreed by a group of people or society. whereas, like moral laws are not arbitrary, they are basically not like those game rules that Piaget used to investigate children’s understanding of morale.
children at a very young age already understand the difference between the different kinds of rules (moral vs. arbitrary), for example, where one can see how conventions differ from morale because you see a boy who just stole a truck (described as bad for moral descretions), you see how somebody drives on the left hand side (described as crazy for violators of social conventions), and you see somebody that can fly (described as magic for violators of physical laws).
Lawrence Kohlberg approached the study of moral development slightly different to Piaget. He believed that children construct morality by developing a system of beliefs about concepts that they might have like justice and individual rights. He believed young children confuse moral issues with other issues such as power and authority. He believed children take a long time to develop accurate beliefs and reasoning patterns around morality.
Kohlberg’s Theory:
initially proposed sixe stages of moral development, which he then clustered into 3 larger levels, and these levels loosely resonate with the stage of moral development that Piaget proposed. Kohlberg assesses children’s level of moral development by using a method that devised known as the moral dilemma. these are short descriptions of morally ambiguous situations in which a character must make a difficult moral choice. after hearing the dilemma, the participant is asked which course of actions is morally superior and why. His key innovation was to focus on the child’s pattern of reasoning about the situation rather than on the judgment itself. the most famous dilemma concerns the Heinz dilemma.
Level 1: Pre-conventional morality - a child believes right and wrong is determined by rewards/punishment
Level 2: Conventional Morality - a child believes views of other matter. Avoidance of blame; seeking approval.
Level 3: Post-Conventional Morality - a child believes abstract notions of justice. rights of others can override obedience to laws/rules
two stages are within each level describing a child’s moral standards in more detail.
Longitudinal Study from Colby and Kohlberg’s (1983) of moral judgment. Asked a group of boys about Kohlberg’s moral dilemmas every few years from age 10 through early adulthood. Note that post-conveniental level was quite uncommon even in adulthood. Stage 1 and 2 of 13 to 16yr olds decreased with age, stage 4 which did not appear at all and the moral reasoning of 10 year olds was reflected in moral thinking of 62% of 36yr olds. stage 5 did not appear until age 20-22yrs old. from the results people can jump back and forth between the stages depending on the dilemma.
Development of Moral Emotions
Psychologists use to think that the ability to judge right from wrong developed fairly late in childhood as a pre-schooler or elementary school student because of the data we saw in Piaget and Kohlberg. Recent studies, however, suggest that some facts of morality may emerge as part of an infants emotional repertoire. so we may refer to these as moral emotions, which is not the same as mature moral reasoning or judgment. and still, this research suggests that preverbal infants may have some intuitive sense of right and wrong. It might just be something that is linked to emotional likes and dislikes, for example, towards social agents.
MORAL EMOTIONS
Eisenberg (2000) Roth-Hanania, Davidov, & Zahn-Waxler (2011)
several emotions such as guilt, shame and empathy, have been viewed as playing a fundamental role in morality;
Shame: a dejection-based, passive, or helpless emotion aroused by self-related aversive events. The ashamed person focuses more on devaluing or condemning the entire self, experiences the self as fundamentally flawed, feels self-conscious about the visibility of one’s actions, fears scorn, and thus avoids or hides from others.
Guilt: an agitation-based emotion or painful feeling of regret that is aroused when the actor actually causes, anticipates causing, or is associated with an aversive event. The guilty actor accepts responsibility for a behavior that violates internalized standards or causes another’s distress and desires to make amends or punish the self.
Empathy: a socio-emotional response induced by the perception of another individual’s affective state. It entails feeling an emotion that is similar to the one likely experienced by the other person.
CONTAGIOUS CRYING
means that we perceive others and we see them in distress and is causes some distress in us. by 6mnths, they start to pick up emotional states from others at a similar level of intensity. contagious throughout the first year of life.
Stimulus: sound of a 3-month-old male infant crying, recorded while the infant was undergoing a blood sampling procedure
Baseline: in the absence of any auditory or visual stimulation, the infant’s behavior was recorded
Test: presentation of the cry stimulus
Geangu, Benga, Stahl, & Striano (2010)
A contagious crying response is not limited to the newborn period. Infants 1-, 3-, 6- and 9-months of age were exposed to a recorded cry (5–6 min), and the majority of them showed vocal and facial distress – at equivalent rates, duration, and intensity across all age groups (Roth-Hanania, Davidov, & Zahn-Waxler, 2011, p. 448).
we do not fully understand the mechanisms underlying emotional contagion. mirror neurons may play a role in emotional contagion by linking action and perception such that the same neurons fire when a person either expresses an emotion or observes that emotion in others. as a result, when we see somebody express sadness, mirror neurons may be activated in that enable the perciever to immediately express that emotion as well. they may potentially convey that emotion to another.
Nonetheless, there is considerable controversy about exactly what cognitive emotional processes correspond to mirror neuron activity in humans and whether they actually support the processes involved in emotional contagion.
EMPATHETIC CONCERN FOR OTHERS
Roth-Hanania, Davidov, & Zahn-Waxler (2011)
in this study, the authors tested whether children do feel a concern and care for others. tested 37 infants together with their mums and employed a longitudinal design where infants would be tested at 8, 10, 12mnths (many dependent variables).
so first of all, infants were exposed to two simulations of maternal distress. in the first, the mother played with the infant using a pounding toy and while playing, the mother pretended to hit her finger with a toy hammer and simulated distress for 60 seconds. in the second simulation, the mother walked towards the infant and pretended to bump her knee into a piece of furniture and simulated distress for 60 seconds. the two simulations were separated for 20 minutes, during which infants engaged in several other activities. the dependent measures were to look at infants responses to distress in the mum (looked for a concerned effect - affective expression of apparent concern for the mum including facial, vocal and other gestures).
Looked at hypothesis testing: Inquiry behaviors indicating that the child attempts to explore the distress and/or comprehend cognitively what is happening to the victim were rated on a 4-point scale on which 1 = absent, 2 = simple non-vocal or simple vocal inquiries or exploration about the distress, 3 = combination of both non-vocal and vocal inquiry/exploration of the distress, and 4 = repeated
Prosocial behavior: Attempts to help or comfort the distressed victim were rated on a 4-point scale, with 1 = none, 2 = slight assistance, 3 = moderate assistance, and 4 = prolonged assistance (assists for more than 5 s).
Estimated growth course of the dependent measures; concerned affect was evident very early on. while prosocial behaviour only started around 1yrs old and there’s not much of a development here.
EMPATHY DEVELOPMENT
Hoffman (2008)
Global empathic distress ~ 6 m
Egocentric empathic distress ~ 12 m
Quasi egocentric empathic distress ~ 14 m
Veridical empathy ~ 24 m
Empathic distress beyond situation ~ 6 years
EMPATHY MACROCOMPONENTS
there are different macro concepts involved in human empathy;
affective arousal - functional at birth
emotional understanding - develops rapidly during the 36mths following birth
emotional regulation - develops throughout childhood and adolescence
these three concepts all influence behaviour!
moderator variables; attitudes, dispositions, mood, and motivations
Development of Moral Behaviour
The question is whether young children tend to show more behaviours that are considered immoral than older children and adults do.
two broad categories of behaviour:
Prosocial Behavior: or altruism, normally refers to actions performed for the benefit of others and at some cost to the person performing the action. Examples: sharing (based on a sense of justice and fairness); helping; cooperation
Antisocial Behavior: consists of acts that harm another individual or a group. It includes not only physical violence, but also verbal assaults and attacks on society and norms, such as cheating and stealing.
FAIRNESS EXPECTATIONS
Schmidt & Sommerville (2011)
so one aspect of prosocial behaviour is to act fairly and to expect fairness.
Violation of expectation (VOE) paradigm with 15-month-old infants; they watched two movies in which an actor allocated crackers to two recipients. the outcome of the resource distribution was initially concluded by a black screen. eventually the black screen was removed and infants looking time was measured. it turned out that infants looked significantly longer to the unfair outcome than to the fair outcome in the test phase. this suggests these test events violated infants expectations of somebody else being fair.
In contrast, infants attention to the asymmetrical vs. symmetrical outcomes in which there are no social agents involved, infants did not have any preference for the asymmetrical or symmetrical outcome. they expected asymmetrical outcome to happen in the social agents.
ALTRUISTIC SHARING
Schmidt & Sommerville (2011)
these were same infants that were tested on the correct VOE paradigm;
an infant sits on mums lap and given the choice between two toys (already prefer one), and then they turned around and the experimenter asked ‘can I have one’. do infants share the toy they prefer more?
12 infants shared the preferred toy (‘‘altruistic sharers’’)
14 infants shared the non-preferred toy (‘‘selfish sharers’’)
12 infants did not respond at all (non-responders)
those who shared their preferred toy were also those who looked longer at the unfair distribution of crackers and the 12 who shared selfishly (gave non-preferred toy) were also the ones who didn’t look longer at the unfair distribution but looked longer at the fair distribution. some overlap between those who expect some fairness in those who share altruistically already at the age of 15mnths.
PROSOCIAL CHOICE: CHIMPANZEES
Horner, Carter, Suchak, & de Waal (2011)
are altruism and prosocial behaviour something evolutionary innate in infants?
the right hand side chimpanzee has a box with some objects - if they give the object in one particular colour then both would be given a reward, but if the chimpanzee only selected the object with the other colour, only he would get a reward but not the other.
the results showed the right hand side chimpanzee showed more prosocial choices significantly more often than chance.
C. MONKEYS REJECT UNEQUAL PAY
Brosnan & de Waal (2003)
monkeys have to give the experimenter something through the window and as an exchange they get a reward. in the equality condition, both of them receive cucumber. in the inequality condition, one monkey exchanged for a cucumber but its partner got a grape which is a much more favoured food. they also had a effort control condition where the grape was handed to the partner by the experimenter (no exchange needed to happen) but the subject herself got a cucumber for exchanging. there was a food control condition where in the absence of a partner, the subject witnessed a grape being placed in the location where the partner normally sat, after which the subject herself exchanged for a cucumber.
chimpanzees compare their own rewards to those that are readily available and their efforts with those with others. they really respond negatively if the partner gets a better deal, so reject unequal pay. Critics argue that real fairness suggests that the monkey who gets grapes refuses them.
something similar was done with children…
OTHER REGARDING PREFERENCES
Fehr, Bernhard, & Rockenbach (2008)
Other-regarding preferences is a concern for the welfare of others; a particular form is inequality aversion.
3 to 8yr olds played a game where they were always getting the choice between; each of them gets one as opposed to a child gets one and the other gets nothing.
prosocial game - even at 3yrs old, most children prefer the equal version
envy game - even at 3yrs old, they go for the equality version, but by the age of 8yrs they don’t like the equality version as much
sharing game - by 8yrs old, about 50% of children go for the equality version
Inequality aversion prevails if subjects prefer allocations that reduce the inequality between themselves and their partner, regardless of whether the inequality is to their advantage or disadvantage.
although the children in this experiment still show they prefer to get more compared to the other ones.
OTHER REGARDING PREFERENCES
Fehr, Bernhard, & Rockenbach (2008)
difference between ingroups and outgroups. the inequality version is reduced especially in the prosocial game; when a person is an outgroup member, they tend to select one for themselves and zero for the other.
in the sharing game; especially in 8yr olds, when a person is from an outgroup, they are likely to take the two and the other gets nothing.
in the envy game; tend to more likely go for the equal version. each person gets one.
as children age, they choose the equality version even when there is a disadvantage to them.
HELPERS PREFERRED
Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom (2007)
Scarf, Imuta, Colombo, & Hayne (2012)
many infants prefer the helper over the hindered in experiment 1 at the age of 6mnths and 10mnths. they did not necessarily prefer the upward movement over the downward movements at 6mnths and 10mnths. the results across the different experiments.
But critics argue: Videos show […] a positive bouncing event when the climber reaches the top of the hill on help trials. We argue that it is these negative and positive events, rather than the ability to evaluate individuals as good or bad, that drive infants’ choices. The helper is viewed as positive because, although associated with the aversive collision event, it is also associated with the more salient and positive bouncing event. In contrast, the hinderer is viewed as negative because it is only associated with the aversive collision event (Scarf et al., 2012, p.1)
Describe an experiment which shows that infants prefer someone who helps over someone who hinders? Give a rich and a weak interpretation of these findings:
Hamlin, Wynn, & Bloom (2007) ran an experiment with 6-and 10-month-olds. When watching one shape help another shape move up a hill versus another shape hinder the shape by pushing it down the hill, infants choose to play with/grab the helper shape over the hinderer shape. Therefore infants prefer the helper over the hinderer. [4] Alternatively:-Hamlin & Wynn (2011) found that when watching one toy animal help another toy animal, e.g., open a box, versus another toy animal shutting the box and hindering, infants choose to grab/play with the helper toy animal. Therefore infants prefer the helper over the hindered.
Rich Interpretation: Children understand that agents can act with good and bad intentions.[3]
Weak Interpretation of Hamlin et al. (2007): Scarf’s data showing that children may actually prefer the bouncing rather than the helper. [3]
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PROSOCIAL VS. ANTISOCIAL OTHERS
Hamlin, & Wynn (2011)
whether child prefer a helping puppet?
Social: the Opener puppet moved forward, grabbed the other corner of the box lid, and opened the box together with the Protagonist. The Closer puppet moved forward and jumped on the lid of the box, slamming it shut.
Inanimate Control: identical to Social events, except that the Protagonist puppet was replaced with an inanimate plastic pincer covered in green duct tape.
they preferred the closing motion, but when it come to helping they preferred the opening motion.
COOPERATION
Ashley & Tomasello (1998)
do children cooperate with each other?
2 children had to stand on a mat (one on red, one on blue mat). the one on the red mat had to move the lever to the right and the one on the blue mat had to rotate the handle to 180 degrees. both of them had to do this motion at the same time and not let go so the glass door would open.
2-year-old children did not learn to succeed in the task, either on their own or after adult instruction.
2.5-year- old and 3-year-old children learned to be successful in the task, but only slowly, with most requiring some adult assistance.
3.5 year-old children succeeded in the cooperative task in approximately half the time (compared to the other kids)
Theories
Moral Judgement
Piaget delineated two age-related moral stages and a transitional period.
In the first stage, heteronomous morality of constraint (younger than 7yrs), young children tend to believe that rules are unchangeable and tend to weigh consequences more than intentions in evaluating the morality of actions.
In the transitional period (7-10yrs old), children typically have more egalitarian interactions with peers with give and take, than in their interactions with adults. they are increasingly learning to take another persons perspective and to cooperate, therefore start to value fairness, equality and thinking autonomically about moral issues.
in the autonomous stage (11 or 12yrs old), children realise that rules are social products that can be changed, and they consider motives and intentions when evaluating behaviour. several aspects of Piaget’s theory have not held up well to scrutiny (little evidence that peer interaction automatically stimulates moral development, children do actually use their own knowledge of intentionality to evaluate others behaviours), but his theory provided the foundation for subsequent work on moral reasoning.
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Kohlberg (heavily influenced by Piaget) outlined three levels of moral judgement - preconventional, conventional and post convention - each originally containing two stages (Stage 6 was eventually dropped from Kohlberg’s scoring procedure). interested in the sequences through which children’s moral reasoning develops overtime. Kohlberg hypothesized that his sequence of stages reflects age-related, discontinuous (qualitative) changes in moral reasoning that are universal (meaning, each new stage reflects a more advanced way of thinking than the one before it).
preconventional - (Self-Centred)
stage 1 - Punishment and Obedience Orientation
stage 2 - Instrumental and Exchange Orientation
conventional - (Social Relationships)
stage 3 - Mutual Interpersonal Expectations, Relationships and Interpersonal Conformity (‘Good Girl, Nice Boy’) Orientation
stage 4 - Social System and Conscience (‘Law and Order’) orientation.
postconventional - (Ideals)
Stage 5 - Social Contract or Individual Rights Orientation
Stage 6 - Universal Ethical Principle
According to Kohlberg, these changes stem from cognitive advances, particularly in perspective taking. although there is support for the idea that higher levels of moral reasoning moves through discontinuous stages of development or develops the same way in all cultures and for all kinds of moral issues (e.g., prosocial-moral reasoning.
criticisms
- did not sufficiently differentiate between truly moral issues and issues of social convention
- differences within cultures not considered
- his argument that moral reasoning is discontinuous; however research shows children and adults reason at different levels on different occasions - or even on the same occasion
-whether gender differences exist in moral reasoning
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The conscience involves internalised moral standards and feelings of guilt for misbehaviour: it restrains the individual from engaging in unacceptable behaviour. the conscience develops slowly over time, beginning before age 2. the conscience develops slowly over time, beginning before age 2. children are more likely to internalise parental standards if they are securely attached and if their parents do not rely on excessive parental power in their discipline. factors that promote the development of conscience differ somewhat among children, depending on their temperament and genetic inheritance.
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There are important differences among the moral (decisions that pertain to issues of right and wrong, fairness, and justice - stealing another child toy), social-conventional (decisions that pertain to customs or regulations intended to secure social coordination and social organisation - wearing pajamas to school), and personal domains of behaviour and judgment (decisions that refer to actions in which individual preferences are the main consideration - whom to be friends with). for example, young children believe that moral transgressions, but not social-conventional or personal violations, are wrong regardless of whether adults say they are unacceptable. young children, like older children, differentiate among domains of social judgement. which behaviours are considered matters of moral, social-conventional, or personal judgment varies somewhat across cultures. for example, in whether a given behaviour is viewed as having moral implications.
Theories
Prosocial Behaviour
Prosocial behaviour is voluntary behaviour intended to benefit another, such as helping, sharing, and comforting others. young children who are prosocial, especially those who spontaneous engage in sharing even at a personal cost, tend to be prosocial when older.
Prosocial behaviour emerge by the 2nd year of life and increase in frequency with age, probably due to age-related increases in children’s abilities to sympathise and take others’ perspectives. differences among children in these abilities contribute to individual differences in children’s prosocial behaviour.
Heredity, which contributes to differences among children in temperament, likely affects how empathic and prosocial children are
the development of prosocial behaviour also is related to children’s upbringing. A positive parent - child relationship; authoritative parenting; the use of reasoning by parents and teachers; and exposure to prosocial models, values, and activities are associated with the development of sympathy and prosocial behaviour. cultural values and expectations also appear to affect the degree to which children exhibit prosocial behaviour and toward whom.
school-based intervention programs designed to promote cooperation, perspective taking, helping, and prosocial values are associated with increased prosocial tendencies in children.
Antisocial Behaviour
aggressive behaviour emerges by the 2nd year of life and increases in frequency during the toddler years; physical aggression starts to decline in frequency in the preschool years. in elementary school, children tend to exhibit more nonphysical aggression (e.g., relational aggression) than at younger ages, and some children increasingly engage in antisocial behaviours such as stealing.
from preschool on, boys are more physically aggressive than girls and are more likely to engage in delinquent behaviour
early individual differences in aggression and conduct problems predict antisocial behaviour in later childhood, adolescence, and adulthood
biological factors that contribute to differences among children in temperament and neurological functioning likely affect how aggressive children become. social cognition also affects aggression: aggressive children tend to attribute hostile motives to others and to have hostile goals themselves.
children’s aggression is promoted by a range of environmental factors, including low parental support; chaotic families; poor monitoring; abusive, coercive, or inconsistent disciplining; and stress or conflict in the home. in addition, involvement with antisocial peers likely contributes to antisocial behaviour, although it is also likely that aggressive children seek out antisocial peers. aggression also varies somewhat across cultures, suggesting that cultural values, norms, and socialisation practices may also contribute to individual differences in aggression and antisocial behaviour.
children who are diagnosed with an antisocial behaviour disorder such as conduct disorder or oppositional defiant disorder display relatively severe forms of problematic behaviours.
in high-risk schools, interventions designed to promote understanding and communication of emotions, positive social behaviour, self-control, and social problem solving can reduce the likelihood that children will develop behaviour problems, including aggression
