An Experimental Study On The Effect Of Moral Judgment On Young Children’s Altruistic Punishment And Reward

Altruistic punishment and reward are an important means to maintain fairness and cooperation,and are an important part of individual prosocial behavior.Therefore,the development characteristics and influencing factors have attracted much attention in recent years.Moral judgment is closely related to the development of individual prosocial behavior,but the relationship between it and altruistic punishment and reward is not clear.Therefore,this study aims to investigate the effect of moral judgment on altruistic punishment and reward on young children.In experiment 1,30 children with result orientation and motivation orientation were selected from Piaget’s paired story to test their moral judgment level,and a mixed design was adopted with 2(Moral judgment: result orientation vs.motivation orientation)×3(Cost: none vs.low vs.high),in which the cost is the with-subject variable.In order to investigate whether the child,as a third party,will make altruistic punishment for the self-interested distribution of the distributor.The results showed that when there was no cost,the performance of the two groups of children was consistent.When the cost is low,16 and 22 people in the result group and motivation group advocate punishment respectively,and the difference is not significant.When high cost advocates punishment,the result orientation group only has 6 people,but the motivation orientation group still has 21 people,the difference is significant.The design of experiment 2 is the same as experiment 1,to investigate whether children,as a third party,will give altruistic reward to altruistic distribution.The results showed that when there was no cost,20 people in each group claimed the reward,accounting for 66.67%.When the cost was low,19 people in the motivation group still claimed rewards,while the result orientation group decreased to 10 people,with a significant difference.When the cost is high,15 people in the motivation orientation group advocate rewards,while only 4 people in the result orientation group have significant differences.The design of experiment 3 is the same as that of experiment 1.The purpose is to investigate whether children,as a third party,will give altruistic reward for the average distribution behavior.The results showed that the responses of children varied with costs,but the differences between groups were not significant: when there was no cost,more than 90% of children in the two groups advocated rewards.When the cost is low and the cost is high,17 people in the result orientation group advocate rewards,23 people in the motivation orientation group and 20 people advocate rewards respectively.Based on the conditions of this study,the following conclusions can be drawn:Firstly,moral judgment has a significant impact on altruistic rewards and punishments of large-class children.That is,children with higher level of moral judgment are more inclined to punish selfish distribution and reward altruistic distribution,especially when they need to pay high costs,the effect is more significant.Secondly,cost has a significant effect on altruistic rewards and punishments of large-class children.Specifically,when there is no cost and low cost,large-class children’s altruistic reward and punishment behavior is higher,and when the cost is increased,children’s altruistic reward and punishment behavior decreases.Thirdly,children have a strong preference for equal distribution in resource allocation.Compared with altruistic distribution,they are more inclined to reward equal distribution.Based on the conclusion of this study,the researchers put forward two suggestions for preschool education practice:Firstly,to guide the healthy development of children’s altruistic rewards and punishments by cultivating the development of children’s moral judgment.Moral judgment has a significant impact on the altruistic rewards of large-class children,and the higher the level of moral judgment,the higher the altruistic rewards and punishments of children.Therefore,it can improve children’s moral judgment level,cultivate children’s fairness and sensitivity,and promote the healthy development of children’s altruistic rewards and punishments.In daily life,we should pay attention to children’s moral development level,seize the opportunity of education,guide children to pay attention to moral events and promote their moral development.For example,in some moral events,children are guided to discuss social events and pay attention to the intention and motivation of the events,not just the results.Secondly,Protect and develop children’s sense of fairness and pay attention to the development and cultivation of children’s pro-social behaviors.In this study,we found that young children have a strong need to maintain fairness and a psychological need to punish bad people.Then in education,teachers can appropriately create game situations to meet the needs of young children.For example,the development of the police Catch The Thief game can appropriately expand the subsequent game design after the thief is caught under the premise of safety.In addition,children will often encounter resource allocation problems in their life.It is also very important to understand fairness in resource allocation.Large classes are just the development stage of children’s altruistic punishment and altruistic rewards.Teachers and parents can pay more attention to children’s performance in The Just and The Unjust situations and cultivate children’s cognition of fairness and rules.