RECOGNITION OF INTENTION AND EFFECT OF MODELING ON CHILDREN'S MORAL JUDGMENTS

Abstract

Two experiments were carried out in order to investigate the effects of modeling on children's moral judgments.
The purposes of the experiment I were (1) to replicate the results of Cowan et al.(1969) which showed the different effects of the counteracting adult models between the Ss who expressed subjective ju dgment on pretest and those who expressed objective one; and (2) to examine whether the Ss who expressed objective judgment could be classified into the two types based on King's test (1971), i, e., those who can recognize the actor's intention in everyday events and those who cannot, and to examine the difference of the modeling effects among them. The Ss were the children between the ages of 4 and 9. Based on the scores of the individually administered pretest of moral judgments, the Ss were assigned to one of the two experimental conditions. In the experimental treatment, the Ss who expressed objective judgments on the pretest were exposed to a model giving subjective judgments (up condition), while the Ss who expressed subjective judgments on the pretest were exposed to a model giving objective judgments (down condition). The model was always given verbal approval for judgments and the S was given verbal approval only when his judgment was at the opposite level to his judgments on the pretest. In each group, half of the Ss were given a posttest immediately after the experimental treatment and the other half were given a delayed posttest 2 weeks later. The results indicated that by modeling procedure it is possible to change from objective to subjective judgment (up condition), but that it is difficult to change in the opposite direction (down condition). The results also indicated that among the Ss who expressed objective judgments, those who recognized the actor's intention came to be able to express subjective judgments more than those who did not recognize it.
The purpose of the experiment II was to examine whether the Ss, who could not express subjective judgments and did not recognize the actor's intention, could be led to express subjective judgments by means of modeling procedure which enabled recognition of the actor's intention. The Ss were children between the ages of 4 and 6. Based on the pretest results, children who could not express subjective judgments and did not recognize the actor's intention were chosen. Two experimental conditions were set up: one was the condition easy for the recognition of the actor's intention (I condition) and the other was a standard one and it did not emphasize the actor's intention on modeling' procedure (N condition). The results indicated that it was possible to change from objective to subjective judgment by means of modeling procedure in both conditions, but that it was more effective in I condition than N condition.
These results were interpreted as indicating that the effects of modeling on children's moral judgments changed according to the Ss' level of recognition of intention and that recognition of the actor's intention was related to children's moral judgments.