Preschool Children Transfer Real-World Moral Reasoning into Pretense

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Moral Psychology
• Cognitive Development

Background:

• Children often transfer knowledge between real and pretend worlds.
• Previous research shows transfer of object properties, causality, and problem-solving.
• The extension of moral reasoning into pretense remains less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if preschoolers extend moral principles from reality into pretense.
• To determine if the proximity of the pretend world to reality influences this moral transfer.
• To examine the boundary between children's understanding of reality and fantasy in moral judgments.

Main Methods:

• Preschoolers (N=63) evaluated the acceptability of antisocial behaviors.
• Scenarios included pretend, fantastical, and non-pretend (real-world) contexts.
• Children's judgments were compared across these different scenario types.

Main Results:

• Antisocial behaviors were judged equally unacceptable in both pretend and non-pretend situations.
• Antisocial behaviors were deemed more acceptable in fantastical pretend scenarios.
• Moral judgments were more consistent with reality in pretend scenarios closer to the real world.

Conclusions:

• Preschoolers extend their real-world moral representations into pretend play.
• The degree of moral transfer is influenced by the realism of the pretend scenario.
• Findings offer insights into children's moral reasoning and their grasp of the reality-fantasy distinction.