Young children's coordination of motive and outcome in judgements of satisfaction and morality

Abstract

Three‐ to seven‐year‐old children judged a story‐character's satisfaction. Their comprehension of the relationship between motives and outcomes of action was tested by presenting them with matching and with mismatching outcomes. For example, one character's motive, depicted in a ‘thinks’ bubble, was to throw a ball to one of two children. In a matching outcome, the intended child caught the ball, whereas in a mismatching outcome, the other child caught it. Even the youngest children judged the character more pleased when the outcome matched his motive than when it did not. This suggests that children from three years old can integrate motive and outcome information. Children under seven years failed to judge satisfaction appropriately when motives and outcomes were bad. Comparisons of children's satisfaction judgements with their moral judgements of the story‐characters suggested possible reasons for this failure. The implications of the results for social cognition and information integration are discussed.