A Research About Children's Moral Development Based On Exchange Behavior

The study of children's moral development mainly focused on moral reasoning and moral judgment.By analyzing children's judgment and reasoning about moral stories which are closely related to their daily life reveals the psychological mechanism of moral development.In order to further explore psychological process of moral reasoning and moral judgment,which requires to consider the value system behind morality and the principle of equality and reciprocity under the value system.Reciprocity is the core of moral development.Exchange behavior reflects the equality and reciprocity criteria.Therefore,we make an assumption that the development of exchange behavior reflects the construction of children's concept of fair and reciprocity.Based on the above assumptions,this study examines the relationship between childrme's exchange behavior and children's moral development through four experiments.Experiment 1 investigated the relationship between children's exchange behavior and children's moral development.According to Faigenbaum(2005),combined with the characteristics of children's exchange behavior in life,We developed a questionnaire about Children's daily exchange behavior to examine the chidren's exchange behavior.In the moral test task,we told moral stories and asked children to make judgment and reasoning.The results showed that children's exchange behavior has positive relationship with chidren's moral scores.Experiment 2 investigated the relationship between children's understanding of ownership and exchange behavior.According to Cram's(1988)research about children's owenership attribution,we writed 11 stories about ownership.Children need to make a judgment that who owns the object and what kind of rights does he/she has.We simulate exchange games to observe children's exchange behavior.The results showed that children's score of ownership understanding are higher,children's exchange behaviors are more mature and stable.Experiment 3 investigated the relationship between children's the ability of value judgment and exchange behavior.We test the ability of value judgment through a task in which children need to assess the objects'price.The results showed that when children the ability of value judgment is higher,children's exchange behaviors are more mature and stable.Experiment 4 synthesizes the results of the third experiments to further systematically investigated the relationship between children's exchange behavior and children's moral development.We divided children into four groups by test the concept of ownership and value.These children need to complete four exchange games,and moral development test.The results showed that children with high ownership,high value are better in exchange behavior,and they have high moral level.