Rules Mothers and Sons Use to Integrate Intent and Damage Information in Their Moral Judgments

Abstract

LEON, MANUEL. Rules Mothers and Sons Use to Integrate Intent and Damage Information in Their Moral Judgments. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1984, 55, 2106-2113. This study compared the rules mothers and their 6and 7-year-old sons used to assign punishment as a function of intent and damage. 3 rules were found: 18 mothers integrated intent and damage information using an intent + damage linear rule. 10 mothers used an accident-configural rule and discounted damage when paired with information implying an accident, but not when paired with information implying malicious intent. Finally, 4 mothers based their judgments solely on damage. Boys whose mothers used the linear or accidentconfigural rules tended to use linear or accident-configural rules, respectively. Similarly, boys whose mothers attended solely to damage tended to rely solely on damage. These results suggest that research should emphasize the process by which children come to employ multidimensional rules and the role of parental models in this process. In contrast, current research in moral judgments largely ignores the rule-governed nature of children's judgments.