Moral Motivation in Early Childhood: Measurement, Relations to Social Conduct, and the Role of Socialisation

Moral motivation is a key component of young children’s moral development that provides crucial insights into their propensity to engage in positive (and negative) social behaviours. This thesis explores the measurement of moral motivation in children between 4 and 8 years of age, examines its relations to their social conduct, investigates its developmental trajectory, and explores how it can be nurtured by parental socialisation.

Study 1 compared two measures of moral motivation, the Moral Emotion Attribution (MEA) task (Nunner-Winkler & Sodian, 1988) and the Moral Self-Concept (MSC) task (Kochanska et al., 1997), in a sample of 59 elementary school children aged 6-8 years. Findings revealed an agentive identification effect for the MEA task such that children provided more mature moral emotion responses when they were asked to imagine how they themselves would feel in a given moral situation (MEA-self), rather than how a story protagonist would feel (MEA-other). Additionally, the MEA-self and MSC tasks demonstrated a significant association, particularly with morally-themed stories, which remained significant when children’s verbal abilities and theory of mind (ToM) were controlled for. Further analyses showed that, in comparison to the MEA-self tasks, the MSC task more consistently predicted children’s social behaviour in ways that were independent of the influence of ToM on children’s social behaviour. The MEA-self task did not significantly predict social behaviour after controlling for the simpler MSC task, and ToM. This finding highlights the robustness of the MSC task in measuring children’s moral motivation and predicting their social conduct.

Study 2 focused on 67 preschool children aged 4-6 years to investigate whether the relations observed in Study 1 extended to younger children during a period of rapid development in social cognition (i.e., ToM). Like Study 1, Study 2 compared the MEA and MSC tasks, and explored relations with ToM. Unlike the older children in Study 1, preschool children did not exhibit a significant difference in moral emotion attributions when asked to consider how they themselves (MEA-self) would feel versus how a story protagonist (MEA-other) would feel, although a non-significant trend emerged. This suggests that children become better at self-other emotion differentiation as they get older. A hierarchical regression analysis was used to test whether children’s performance on the MSC task and their ToM was related to their performance on the MEA task. Results broadly supported Study 1, showing that there was a robust but modest association between MSC and MEA task performance, independent of children’s verbal abilities, ToM, and effortful control. Furthermore, as in Study 1, ToM was not independently related to children’s performance on the MEA (or the MSC) task.

Together, the findings of Studies 1 and 2 suggested that both the MSC and MEA tasks tap into similar aspects of children’s moral motivation despite the stark methodological difference between them; specifically, children’s self-referential emotions and the process of moral self-identification. When compared directly, however, the MEA task did not provide any additional information about children’s moral motivation in relation to their social behaviour over and above the MSC task. Contrary to many interpretations of the MEA literature, this finding suggests that, in so far as the MEA task provides a window on young children’s moral motivation, it is likely to do so in the same way as the simpler MSC task.

In Study 3, therefore, a longitudinal design was employed with 106 children between 6. and 7. years of age, focusing on the developmental trajectory of their moral self (as measured on the MSC task), and its relationship with their social behaviour and ToM. Results revealed longitudinal stability of MSC, but with an asymmetrical and counter-intuitive influence: past social behaviour predicted future MSC, while past MSC did not predict future social behaviours. This asymmetry suggests that the MSC task is sensitive to children’s behavioural track record, which shapes the development of a child’s moral self in this age-window. This direction of influence aligns with theories of moral socialisation (Blasi, 1999; Grusec, 2006) and suggests that, even at an age when children can reliably pass the MEA task, their moral self is best conceived in terms of their consistent experience of themselves as a social actor rather than in terms of their attempts to achieve moral consistency in their activity or their sense of self. Study 3 also underscored the distinctive developmental trajectories of children’s moral self and their ToM.

Study 4 explored the role of socialisation through a systematic review of parenting practices on children’s moral emotions (guilt, sympathy, and empathy) from birth to 7 years. The review highlighted the significant influence of parenting, particularly the quality of the parent-child relationship, responsive parenting, secure attachment, and moral discourse, in nurturing children’s moral emotions. However, methodological variations in the measurement of parenting practices and moral emotions, along with the small number of studies addressing guilt and sympathy specifically, posed challenges to synthesising the findings. These inconsistencies suggest the need for more precise methodologies to capture the nuanced effects of parenting on moral emotion development.

Collectively, the studies presented in this thesis advance our understanding of children's moral motivation, particularly in its measurement, relationship to social behaviour, and the influence of parenting practices. The findings speak to the reliability and validity of the MSC task as a measure of young children’s moral self, and highlight the developmental complexity of the MEA task. The thesis also contributes to the broader literature on moral self-concept, emphasising the pivotal role of past behaviour in shaping children’s moral self. Future research should continue to refine methodological approaches in measuring moral motivation. Additionally, these insights can guide parents and educators in better supporting children’s moral development.