Order of Information Presentation and Children's Moral Judgments

Abstract

It was hypothesized that age differences in use of intent information in children's moral judgments might be due to a recency effect in the judgments of younger children. A study was conducted to examine the effect of order of stimulus presentation on children's moral judgments. The information was presented to children, ages 4-5 and 8-9 years old, through stories with either normal information order, intent-consequence, or reversed order, consequence-intent. It was found that order has a significant impact on children's moral judgments. In addition, memory data were gathered which indicated that the pattern of forgetting was parallel to the pattern of information preference for the younger subjects. The findings suggested that younger subjects' relative neglect of intent in the normal order of information was based, in part, on their failure to remember the material correctly rather than on differential weighting of the 2 cues.

The development of intention-based morality: The influence of intention salience and recency, negligence, and outcome on children’s and adults’ judgments.

“…For these participants, then, this manipulation appears to have lacked effectiveness. Given the efficacy of similar changes in previous research (e.g., Bearison & Isaacs, 1975;Feldman et al, 1976;Nelson et al, 1980;Nummedal & Bass, 1976), this is surprising, and suggests that failure to understand or recall occurred even more frequently in the large majority of previous research because outcomes are usually more salient and recent than intentions. However, Gvozdic et al (2016) propose that much of children's outcomebased judgment occurs because of the related issue of failure to inhibit automatic responses to outcomes.…”

Moral Judgment: Truth, Order and Consequence

“…Although not common in the moral judgment domain, there is work indicating that judgments are sensitive to the order in which information is presented (Austin, Ruble, & Trabasso, 1977;Feldman et al, 1976;Petrinovich, & O'Neill, 1996;Sinnott-Armstrong, Mallon, McCoy, & Hull, 2008;Wiegmann, Okan, & Nagel, 2012). Wiegmann et al (2012) point out two types of order effects (Primacy & Recency effects; Sequential effects).…”

“…Wiegmann et al (2012) point out two types of order effects (Primacy & Recency effects; Sequential effects). First, developmental studies show that the first and last items of information presented in a moral scenario lead to the most extreme moral judgments (Austin et al, 1977;Feldman et al, 1976). Second, in the adult domain work has shown that if the first scenario in a sequence of multiple scenarios involves an action that is judged to be strongly prohibited, then this leads to more severe moral judgments generalize to other moral scenarios (Petrinovich & O'Neill, 1996;Wiegmann et al, 2012).…”

Separable effects of motives, consequences, and presentation order on children's moral judgments.

“…By analyzing individual children's data, Grueneich (in press) also concluded that there is a developmental increase in the use of both cues. In contrast, Parsons et al (1976) and Feldman et al (1976) concluded that even kindergartners combined motive and consequence information, and that presentation order was only one variable influencing the effect of motives on moral 257 judgments. Austin et al (1977) found no differences between 6-and 8-year-olds in either the use of motives or the effects of order of presentation.…”

“…Requests for reprints should be sent to Colleen F. Surber, Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin,Madison,Wisconsin S3706. of the moral dilemmas presented (Gutkin, 1972), the valence of the consequence information (Costanzo, Coie, Grumet, & Farmil, 1973), the salience of intentionality information (Bearison & Isaacs, 1975), potential justifications for one's acts (Darley, Klosson, & Zanna, 1978;Hewitt^ 1975), and the order in which motive and consequence information is,presented (Austin, Ruble, & Trabasso, 1977;Feldman, Klosson, Parsons, Rholes, & Ruble, 1976;Grueneich, in press;Nummedal & Bass, 1976;Parsons, Ruble, Chereskin, Feldman, & Rholes, 1976).…”