We all hope that as children grow up, they will develop a clear understanding of the difference between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. But what factors are involved in children’s development of a sense of morality? And what changes do children go through in their behaviour and thinking when faced with moral dilemmas?

It is intuitively appealing to see parents as the main influence on children’s moral development. But are children’s beliefs about what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’ really dependent on how they are brought up? The idea that children learn moral values simply through being punished for misbehaviour is certainly problematic. Of course, children’s misbehaviour sometimes does have to be disciplined through immediate negative consequences, especially when the safety of others or of the children themselves is threatened.

However, relying on frequent punishments (e.g., shouting, smacking) to encourage the long-term development of positive moral behaviour is unlikely to be effective. In fact, research evidence shows that parents’ use of physical punishment may be related to greater levels of aggression by young children towards their peers. Children are more likely to learn positive moral values from their parents if they are helped to understand those values through explanations.

Many researchers have focused on how children’s behaviour is shaped by their observations of role-models in the world around them, including peers, figures in the media, and other people besides their parents. In fact, researchers have often demonstrated that other people’s positive and negative behaviours can be imitated by children. There is good evidence that children’s prosocial behaviour (e.g., sharing, helping, caring) can be increased by observing models who show such behaviours themselves.

In a similar way, seeing others behave in antisocial ways could potentially encourage negative behaviours. In one famous series of experiments in the 1960s, for example, Albert Bandura demonstrated that children who observed an adult behaving aggressively towards an inflatable toy doll were more likely to reproduce that aggressive behaviour themselves. This link between what you see around you and what you do yourself underpins many of the concerns people have about violence on television, although this remains a controversial topic in both public and academic debate.

If children do learn patterns of moral behaviour from others, is it reasonable to assume that the way they think about moral situations is also influenced by social factors? Some evidence for this is found in cross-cultural studies of children’s reasoning about moral dilemmas.

For example, imagine that a man is about to catch a train to get to his best friend’s wedding, where he is due to serve as best man. But in the train station, his wallet and train ticket are stolen. He then sees the opportunity to steal a ticket from another person. Should he steal the ticket to get to his friend’s wedding? A research study by Joan Miller and David Bersoff in 1992 showed that when faced with these kinds of dilemmas, Indians and Americans (aged 8, 12, and 21 years) differed in their choices. An average of 84% of Indians chose to meet their social obligations (e.g., to serve as best man at the wedding) even if it meant breaking a principle of justice (e.g., by stealing). But only 39% of Americans tended to resolve the dilemmas in this way. This kind of evidence strongly suggests that children’s beliefs about morality are at least partly shaped by the value systems of the society in which they are brought up.

Despite this evidence that children’s moral sense develops by watching others and ‘internalizing’ the values and norms they perceive in the world around them, many researchers have placed more emphasis on systematic changes in children’s thinking as they get older.

One major theory of children’s moral development was put forward in the first half of the twentieth century by the famous developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget. He used various methods to make sense of the way children think about rules, such as asking children to make moral judgements about simple scenarios, and interviewing children about the rules of their games (e.g., marbles).

Piaget suggested that between approximately 5 and 10 years of age, children see rules as rigid and unalterable, set by external sources such as adults. Also, Piaget argued that young children’s difficulties with understanding other people’s intentions and perspectives meant that they would focus more on objective outcomes than on subjective motives. For example, when comparing a story character who breaks one cup while stealing some jam with a story character who accidentally breaks fifteen cups on his way to dinner, young children tended to view the second character as naughtier, because he broke more cups.

Older children were seen by Piaget as better able to appreciate how people have different perspectives on the world. Therefore, he believed that they could see how cooperation and negotiation are important in setting and changing rules. Older children were also thought to have a greater understanding of others’ intentions. So, in the scenarios described above, they tended to judge the child who broke one cup as naughtier because of his ‘bad’ motive.

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Content last updated: 14/12/2005

About our expert

Dr Robin Banerjee is a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Sussex. His research addresses social, cognitive, and emotional factors involved in children's peer relations. He works closely with educational psychologists, teachers, and policy-makers in the development of strategies for supporting children's socio-emotional development. Robin is also a member of the Developmental and Clinical Psychology Research Group in the Department of Psychology.

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