CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS OF JUSTICE: A COMPARISON WITH THE PIAGET DATA

Abstract

This is an investigation of children's concepts of justice, in particular, of justice regarding one's person. It is specifically designed to examine developmental trends, with age, in these concepts, and to compare trends with those described by Piaget in The Moral Judgment of Child (9). It also examines relationship between intelligence of children and their justice-concepts. In Piaget investigation 167 subjects, ranging in age from 6 to 12 years, were questioned about what should be done if someone punches you. They generally proposed two quite different solutions. Younger subjects favored reporting to an authority person; older subjects, a return of aggression. Piaget saw in this trend of responses evidence for his theory concerning the existence of a sort of law of evolution in moral development of (9, p. 225)According to Piaget's exposition of theory, this law is of psychological origin being rooted in child-adult social relationships. For child of about 7 or 8 relationship is necessarily one of unilateral respect, hence, of constraint. And, Piaget maintains, fruit of this constraint in moraljudgment development is twofold: (a) an ethic of heteronomy wherein good is defined by submission to adult authority, and (b) moral realism,