Five-year-old children value reasons in apologies for belief-based accidents

Owen Waddington; Marina Proft; Keith Jensen; Bahar  Köymen

doi:10.1111/cdev.13893

Five-year-old children value reasons in apologies for belief-based accidents

Georg-August-Universitat Gottingen

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Abstract

Accidents can be intent-based (unintended action-unintended outcome) or belief-based (intended action-unintended outcome). As compared to intent-based accidents, giving reasons is more crucial for belief-based accidents because the transgressor appears to have intentionally transgressed. In Study 1, UK-based preschoolers who were native speakers of English (N=96, 53 girls, collected 2020-2021) witnessed two intent-based or belief-based accidents; one transgressor apologised, the other apologised with a reason. Only 5-year-olds favoured the reason-giving transgressor following a belief-based accident but not an intent-based accident (where an apology was suffice). In Study 2, 5-year-olds (N=48, 25 girls, collected 2021) distinguished between “good” and “bad” reasons for the harm caused. Thus, 5-year-old children recognise when reasons should accompany apologies and account for the quality of these reasons.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	e143-e153
Journal	Child Development
Volume	94
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13893
Publication status	Published - 1 May 2023

Keywords

moral reasoning
moral common ground
belief-based accidents

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10.1111/cdev.13893

Waddington_2023_ChildDevFinal published version, 3.52 MBLicence: CC BY

LCD-PSY: Centre for Language, Communication and Developmental Psychology
Ambridge, B. (PI), Theakston, A. (PI), Sturrock, A. (CoI), Kindell, J. (CoI), Buckle, L. (CoI), Ferry, A. (CoI), Freed, J. (CoI), Kandemirci, B. (CoI), Linnert, S. (CoI), Lopez-Perez, B. (CoI), Papastergiou, A. (CoI), Twomey, K. (CoI), Köymen, B. (CoI), Mitchell, C. (CoI), Jensen, K. (CoI), Greenwood-Davies, S. (CoI), Hartshorn, C. (CoI), Ormerod, E. (CoI), Purcell, R. (CoI), Starkey, R. (CoI), Durrant, S. (CoI), Ellis, C. (CoI), Pert, S. (CoI), Waddington, O. (Researcher), Alcock, C. (Researcher), Walibhai, W. (Researcher), Zhang, S. (Researcher), Zhao, C. (Researcher), Leith, K. (PGR student), Ward, L. (PGR student), Price-Williams, D. (PGR student), Benafif, S. (PGR student), Eroglu, H. S. (PGR student), Savill, C. (PGR student), Gregori, F. (PGR student), Manfredi, L. (PGR student), Ozturk Mihci, I. (PGR student), Chen, Y. (PGR student), Ewaida, A. (PGR student), Hu, X. (PGR student), Jackson, K. (PGR student), Kerry, S. (PGR student), Zhang, J. (PGR student), Zhang, R. (PGR student), Chen, S. (PGR student), Breen, S. (PGR student), Ozturk, T. P. (PGR student), Walker-Sharpe, P. (PGR student), Price-Williams, D. (PGR student) & Wood, G. (PGR student)
1/09/25 → …
Project: Research

Cite this

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title = "Five-year-old children value reasons in apologies for belief-based accidents",

abstract = "Accidents can be intent-based (unintended action-unintended outcome) or belief-based (intended action-unintended outcome). As compared to intent-based accidents, giving reasons is more crucial for belief-based accidents because the transgressor appears to have intentionally transgressed. In Study 1, UK-based preschoolers who were native speakers of English (N=96, 53 girls, collected 2020-2021) witnessed two intent-based or belief-based accidents; one transgressor apologised, the other apologised with a reason. Only 5-year-olds favoured the reason-giving transgressor following a belief-based accident but not an intent-based accident (where an apology was suffice). In Study 2, 5-year-olds (N=48, 25 girls, collected 2021) distinguished between “good” and “bad” reasons for the harm caused. Thus, 5-year-old children recognise when reasons should accompany apologies and account for the quality of these reasons.",

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Five-year-old children value reasons in apologies for belief-based accidents

Abstract

Keywords

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LCD-PSY: Centre for Language, Communication and Developmental Psychology

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