Intent-based morality in Colombian and Spanish children: Punishment & retribution

Intent-based morality in Colombian and Spanish children. RL Arini et al. European Human Behaviour and Evolution Association, 15th Conference, Mar 2021. https://ehbea2021.com/

Abstract

Objective: The majority of the developmental literature about the role of outcomes and intentions in moral evaluations has been conducted on English-speaking children and focused on harm and property transgressions. We aimed at investigating this phenomenon in 5- to 11-year-olds from collectivistic Colombia and individualistic Spain (N=123) employing moral scenarios involving disloyalty and unfairness.

Methods: We developed a computer game showing internet players violate moral norms; children took the role of referees and had the opportunity to judge and punish the players for their behaviour.

Results: Regarding judgements of transgression severity, Colombian children judged failed intentional transgressions more severely than accidental transgressions in case of disloyalty, but not yet in case of unfairness. Regarding punishment severity, Spanish children began to punish failed intentional transgressions of both moral domains more severely than accidents around 8 years of age. While punishment severity decreased with increasing age for both unfairness and disloyalty in Spanish children, in Colombian children the downward pattern was observed only for unfairness. Additionally, children anticipated punishment to feel worse than how it actually felt during and after punishment allocation.

Conclusions: According to cultural group selection, it makes evolutionary sense that children’s sensitivity to intentionality develops earlier within the moral domains (loyalty) privileged by their own (collectivistic) cultures. Moreover, selective concerns for one moral domain (loyalty) over another (fairness) may become more pronounced with development because of culture-directed learning processes. The lack of hedonic punishment expectations suggests that retribution is unlikely to be the primary driver of children’s third-party punishment.