Interrelations Between Theory of Mind and Morality

Lagattuta, Kristin Hansen; Weller, Drika

doi:10.4324/9780203581957.ch18

Cited by 21 publications

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“…For example, Lagattuta (2005) found that children 7 years and older better understand than younger children that willpower decisions (inhibiting desires to abide by rules) can be emotionally satisfying and that fulfilling desires by breaking rules can cause negative feelings (see also Arsenio, Gold, & Adams, 2006; Lagattuta, Nucci, & Bosacki, 2010; Lagattuta & Weller, 2014). There are also significant improvements between 5 and 7 years of age in recognizing that deciding to forgo personal desires to help others can have emotional benefits (Weller & Lagattuta, 2013, 2014).…”

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confidence: 99%

How do thoughts, emotions, and decisions align? A new way to examine theory of mind during middle childhood and beyond

Lagattuta

Elrod

Kramer

2016

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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The current study examined 4- to 10-year-olds’ and adults’ (N = 280) tendency to connect people’s thoughts, emotions, and decisions into valence-matched mental state triads (thought valence = emotion valence = decision valence; such as, anticipate something bad + feel worried + avoid) and valence-matched mental state dyads (thought-emotion, thought-decision, and emotion-decision). Participants heard vignettes about focal characters who re-encountered individuals who had previously harmed them twice, helped them twice, or both harmed and helped them. Baseline trials involved no past experience. Children and adults predicted the focal characters’ thoughts (anticipate something good or bad), emotions (feel happy or worried), and decisions (go near or stay away). Results showed significant increases between 4 and 10 years in the formation of valence-matched mental state triads and dyads, with thoughts and emotions most often aligned by valence. We also documented age-related improvement in awareness that uncertain situations elicit less valence-consistent mental states than more certain situations, with females expecting weaker coherence among characters’ thoughts, emotions, and decisions than males. Controlling for age and sex, individuals with stronger executive function (working memory and inhibitory control) predicted more valence-aligned mental states. These findings add to the emerging literature on development and individual differences in children’s reasoning about mental states and emotions during middle childhood and beyond.

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confidence: 99%

How do thoughts, emotions, and decisions align? A new way to examine theory of mind during middle childhood and beyond

Lagattuta

Elrod

Kramer

2016

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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“…Research in developmental science has revealed the intricate relations between children's understanding of others' mental states and their moral development [Killen, Mulvey, Richardson, Jampol, & Woodward, 2011;Lagattuta & Weller, 2014;Smetana, Jambon, Conry-Murray, & Sturge-Apple, 2012]. This social-cognitive ability is crucial for identifying threats to others' welfare (understanding the mental states of victims), as well as for recognizing when seemingly intentional transgressions are in fact accidents (understanding the mental states of potential moral transgressors).…”

Section: Morality and Mental State Understandingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Mental state knowledge is important for making mature moral judgments [Lagattuta & Weller, 2014]. Without an accurate understanding of intentionality, children are prone to errors in moral judgment such as attributing negative intentions to wellmeaning individuals, attributing blame to accidental transgressors, or expecting that outgroup members have different intentional states than do ingroup members.…”

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confidence: 99%

Young Children’s Ability to Recognize and Challenge Unfair Treatment of Others in Group Contexts

2018

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Although human societies provide protection from harm and enable the construction of collaborative and mutually beneficial social structures, they also pave the way for social hierarchies that deny equal treatment to certain portions of the population. Moral judgments about fairness and equality, as well as stereotypes, biases, and prejudice, emerge as early as 3 and 4 years of age. Investigating young children’s responses to the unfair treatment of others reveals that, beginning at 3–4 years of age, children often act on ingroup biases and do not yet challenge exclusion or rectify inequalities. By 5–6 years of age, however, children’s knowledge of groups, along with their understanding of others’ mental states, enables them to begin to critically evaluate unfair practices, particularly in peer contexts. These factors play a significant role in young children’s emerging ability to challenge unfair treatment of others.

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“…The measures of significance of mind were non-exclusively dyadic (integrity and being true to yourself and others), although P6 introduced additional purity foundation neutral self-directed (contemplation, conscience) and negative (not thinking about others) measures. Note integrity has been associated with a concept of purity in Moral Foundations theory [25], and was assumed here to be non-exclusively dyadic (other-directed). It was hypothesised (1A) that people's valuation of morality and their valuation of neutral mind would be positively associated with each other.…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research has begun to test theory of mind in the context of moral psychology (see [25] for a review). Theory of mind has been linked to the ability to identify intention in moral acts [26,27].…”

Section: S1 Appendix -Theoretical Basesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Valuation of Morality and Mind: Morality as a Metacognitive Byproduct

Baxter¹

2017

Preprint

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The organism has evolved to view itself as a sentient being. It is theorised that morality is a byproduct of the high valuation of mental properties (the nature of its theory of mind). Five studies were conducted with 2675 participants. A positive association was confirmed between valuation of explicit morality, neutral (general) mind as measured by sentience, and significance of (specific) mind as measured by integrity (1). The moral worth ratings of a protagonist were affected by manipulating perceived significance of mind as expressed by scope and intensity of thought (2). 50% of participants thought morality applies exclusively to creatures with minds (3). A positive association was found between the self-awareness and moral worth ratings of a variety of creatures and human characters (4). Furthermore, the moral worth ratings of a human being and 'philosophical phantom' (sentient inanimate object) were greater than those of a philosophical zombie and rock (5). Like H. Gray et al. [1], this research suggests that morality is based on the belief in mind (1-5). Specifically, the results suggest that valuation of experience (sentience) and agency (significance of mind) are not independent, as assignment of morality appears preconditioned upon the perception of (or assumption of) sentience (5). Furthermore, contrary to dyadic models [2], preliminary analysis supported the prediction of self and other-directed morality (1).

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Interrelations Between Theory of Mind and Morality

Cited by 21 publications

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How do thoughts, emotions, and decisions align? A new way to examine theory of mind during middle childhood and beyond

How do thoughts, emotions, and decisions align? A new way to examine theory of mind during middle childhood and beyond

Young Children’s Ability to Recognize and Challenge Unfair Treatment of Others in Group Contexts

Valuation of Morality and Mind: Morality as a Metacognitive Byproduct

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