Moral Judgments of Aggressive and Nonaggressive Children

Abstract

Moral judgments were studied in 103 aggressive and 79 nonaggressive 10-year-old Finnish children. Their aggressiveness was evaluated by means of peer ratings. Moral judgments were assessed by presenting them with stories from their daily lives that contained moral conflicts. The results showed that the children did not adopt a constant level of moral reasoning; instead, judgments were situation specific. Furthermore, the moral cognitions of aggressive children did not differ from those of their nonaggressive peers, although sex-related differences tended to be significant: Boys adopted absolute moral standards, whereas girls' judgments were more relative.