Lying and Moral Judgement in Young Children According to Age and Story Type
AUTHOR : 정연옥,한세영
INFORMATION : page. 1~25 / 2009 Vol.16 No.3
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to investigate young children's patterns of lying and moral judgments according to age and the kinds of stories involved. The participants included 268 four-and five-year-old children attending one of seven educational institutes for young children in Gyeonggi Province. The investigator conducted 1: 1 interviews with the participants in order to better understand their conception of lies and their perceptions of right and wrong. The measurements consisted of 14 stories about lying. The data collected were analyzed by mean, percentage, and t-test. The research findings are as follows: First, there were age differences in children's ability to judge a lie. Five-year-olds did a better job in their judgments about lying than four-year-olds, whether a story was a lie or not. In particular, the four-year-olds made worse judgments when the story was not a lie than when it was in fact a lie. Second, there were age differences also in children's moral judgments. Third, clear differences were found in the young children's judgments in regards to lying, in terms of the kinds of stories involved. Fourth, there were differences in young children's judgements of right and wrong according to the lying judgments and the kinds of stories involved. They considered lies told with bad intentions and those told in self-defense to be bad, but also judged the lies which produced negative consequences to be bad for some stories, which indicates that the kinds of stories involved play a role in children's moral judgments. In conclusion, it was found that children's intention-based judgments of lies and their conception of right and wrong depends on their age and the kinds of stories being told.
Key word : lying, moral judgment, young children