Cognitive-Developmental Factors in Children's Generosity

Abstract

A factorial design was employed to examine the relationship of role-taking and moral judgement abilities to generosity, both as direct influences and in terms of their roles in mediating the impact of relevant situational influences. Sixty children, aged 7–13 yr., performed two role-taking tasks and two tasks designed to assess concepts of distributive justice. Generosity was observed under one of two conditions, one intended to stimulate sympathy for a potential recipient of charity, one neutral in emphasis. Moral judgement ability as measured was significantly related to generosity but no direct relationship between role-taking and generosity was found. The results also revealed no interactions between the situational and developmental variables. The findings were interpreted as suggesting that age-related changes in generosity may be attributable to developmental transformations in moral judgement and further that generosity for this age group is primarily a normative and not a sympathetic response.