Focusing on ethical guilt and moral pride, this study examined developmental changes in moral emotion expectancies among Japanese children and how such expectancies influence prosocial behavior. A total of 335 lower-, middle-, and upper-grade elementary school students underwent a vignette procedure to measure their ethical guilt and moral pride by reporting their emotions, emotion intensities, and reasoning after immoral (harm and prosocial-omission contexts) and moral (harm-omission and prosocial contexts) actions. They also participated in a sharing task to assess their prosocial behavior. Findings showed an increase in ethical guilt in the harm context from the lower to upper grades, but such a change was not significant; meanwhile, no differences among grade levels were observed in ethical guilt in the prosocial-omission context. In addition, moral pride did not vary by grade in either context. A positive correlation was found between ethical guilt and moral pride, which were also positively associated with prosocial behavior across all contexts. Unlike their Western counterparts, Japanese children reported “neutral” emotions toward moral actions, and their “happy” responses to prosocial omission did not decrease from the lower to upper grades.

【Research Impact】

Scholars have largely ignored the development of ethical guilt and moral pride among Japanese children. This study revealed that ethical guilt and moral pride reinforced Japanese children’s commitment to prosocial behavior and that their moral emotion expectancies differed from those of their Western counterparts. These findings offer basic data supporting educational efforts to improve prosociality and social-emotional learning.