Children Understanding Of Counterfactual Emotions In Moral Events

The purpose of the present study was to further investigate age differences in children's understanding how counterfactual reasoning affects emotions. More specifically, the study was designed to study the effect of the salience of the counterfactual alternative on judgments of others'emotions, and to examine possible correlates of three factors in the understanding of counterfactual-reasoning-based emotions. The three factors were the seriousness of actual outcome, the judged likelihood of the counterfactual outcome and the explicitness of the counterfactual alternative. A cross-cultural comparison of children's understanding of counterfactual emotions in nonmoral events was made as well.Children (from Grade 1 to Grade 6) and adults were presented with stories and were required to make judgments about the emotional responses of the stories'characters. Each story involved two characters who experienced the same negative outcome; one character, however, would have avoided the outcome if he had made a different decision, whereas the other character would not have been able to avoid that outcome even if he had made the alternate decision.The results were as follows:1. Children began to understand counterfactual emotions in nonmoral events at the age of 8 and perform very similarly to adults at the age of 12 in the Chinese cultural context. There was a rather dramatic change between 9 and 10 years of age. The findings were different from those reported by researches in western cultural context.2. Children began to understand counterfactual emotions in intrapersonal moral events at the age of 8 and perform very similarly to adults at the age of 12 and developed fast between 9 and 10 years of age. However, they began to understand counterfactual emotions in interpersonal moral events at the age of 7 and perform very similarly to adults at the age of 12 and developed fast both between 8 and 9 years of age and 11 and 12 years of age.3. No significant differences were found in children's understanding of counterfactual emotions between nonmoral and intrapersonal moral events while differences were found between intrapersonal moral events and interpersonal moral events, which were consistent with the findings from adults.4. No significant differences were found in situations whether the actual outcomes were serious or not.5. Children were able to weigh the effects of a relatively more likely counterfactual vs. a less likely counterfactual.6. When a counterfactual alternative was more explicitly stated, children would show adult-like performance at an earlier age than when the alternative was not explicit.7. The turning points were found between 10 and 12-year-old in children's understanding of positive counterfactual emotion such as relief. This finding was consistent with previous evidence suggesting that children tended to engage in less counterfactual analysis when outcomes were positive than when outcomes were negative. The results also suggested that negative outcomes provide a particularly strong trigger for counterfactual reasoning.8. No sex differences were found in the research.