道德判断中心理状态和事件因果关系的作用:兼对道德判断双加工过程理论的检验

考察青少年儿童和成人在道德判断中利用心理状态和事件因果关系信息的差异,并验证道德判断双加工过程理论.以道德判断中“行为坏的”程度和“应担负的道德责任程度”作为判断问题类型,共有10～11岁和13～15岁的青少年儿童及大学生各120名,完成道德判断测试任务.结果表明在不同的道德判断问题类型下,事件中他人愿望和信念、因果关系信息的作用模式是不同的,支持道德判断双加工过程理论.10～11岁儿童和13～15岁青少年在判断行为坏的程度时,利用心理状态信息和因果关系信息与成人类似.在判断应担负的道德责任程度时,10～11岁儿童更注重行为结果,并且不能综合应用心理状态信息和事件的因果关系信息.13～15岁青少年的道德判断中心理状态信息和事件因果关系信息的作用与成人的情况类似,但在进行应担负的道德责任程度判断时,还不能融合信念与因果关系信息进行道德判断.研究结果为道德判断双加工过程理论提供了支持,而且表明从儿童青少年到成人,利用心理状态和因果关系信息进行道德判断存在不断发展和成熟的过程.

The Role of Mental States and Causality in Moral Judgment:Examination on Dual-process Theory of Moral Judgment

Moral judgment has been explored for many years. Cognitive development theorists have argued that moral judgment in adults mainly relied on intention, but attribution theorists have argued that causality played a key role in moral judgment. However, recent researchers put forward a dual-process theory of moral judgment, which distinguishes two processes of moral judgment: one which begins with harmful consequences and seeks a causally responsible agent, and the other which begins with an action and analyzes the mental states responsible for that action. The present study attempted to examine the rationality of this theory and to investigate the role of mental states and causality for younger children, older children and adults, and to explore children’s developmental process of moral judgment. In this study, 120 undergraduates, 120 children aged 10-11 and 120 adolescent aged 13-15 were tested for a moral sense of judgment. A 2 (desire: negative desire vs. neutral desire) ×2 (belief: negative belief vs. neutral belief) × 3 (causality: harm caused by the agents’ action, vs. no harm vs. harm caused by accidents) experimental design was conducted to test the roles of desire, belief and causality in moral judgment. Participants were presented with a series of stories, and then would answer two types of questions about the extent of the agents’ behavior badness and moral responsibility on a 7-point scale. Our findings were consistent with that of Cushman (2008), which showed that the roles of desire, belief, and causality were different under the two types of moral judgment questions. The results revealed that for 10-11 and 13~15 year-old children, there were significant main effects of desire and belief on the judgment of badness, which indicated that the judgment of badness was mainly based on the mental states of the agents. There were significant main effects of desire, belief, and causality on the judgment of moral responsibility for 10-11 year-olds, but no significant interaction effects were found. There were significant main effects of desire and causality, and significant interaction effects between desire and causality for 13-15 year-olds. The results showed that younger children paid more attention to the consequences and the mental states of the agents, but they cannot jointly use causal connection between behavior and consequence in the judgment of moral responsibility. In addition, younger and older participants did not use abstract mental states (e.g. belief) of the agents in the judgment of moral responsibility.The present study provided support for the dual-process theory of moral judgment. The results demonstrated that moral judgment of badness in adults mainly relied on mental states (e.g. desire, belief, and intention) and judgment of moral responsibility mainly jointly relied on the mental states of agents and causal analysis. There is a developmental process in jointly using information of mental states and causality for younger and older children in the judgments of moral responsibility. This study supported the dual-process theory of moral judgments, and provided additional data about development of moral judgment in children and adolescents.