Previous research indicates that children show moral attitudes towards environmentally harmful actions. How these attitudes are formed, however, is generally unknown. This study examined two factors that may influence children's moral judgments of actions harmful to the environment: The identity of the victim and children's experiences in nature.
Children from three different age groups participated in the study: age 4-6 (N=116), age 7-9 (N=158), and age 10-12 (N=197). All of the children were recruited from schools in Spain. Participating children responded to hypothetical situations as being “OK”, “a little bad”, or “very bad”. These situations represented six types of behaviors: (1) Moral transgressions (e.g. grabbing a euro from a classmate's desk); (2) transgressions of social-conventions (e.g. eating a salad with your fingers); (3) environmentally harmful actions with no specific victim; (4) harmful actions to animals; (5) harmful actions to plants/trees; and (6) personal choices (e.g. reading during recess instead of playing football). Parents completed a survey indicating how much time after school and/or during the weekends their child spends in natural areas.
Findings showed differences between children with high and low exposure to nature. Children with high exposure provided more severe judgments compared to children with low exposure in four out of six behavior types (moral transgressions, environment without a specific victim, animals, and plants/trees). There were no significant differences between the high-exposure and low-exposure groups in the social-conventional and personal choices behavior types. Children in the high-exposure group judged social-conventional transgressions as less severe than hurting another child, an animal or the environment, but more severe than hurting plants/ trees and personal choices. Children with low exposure to nature judged actions that harm other children more severely than any of the other behavior types. They also judged hurting an animal more severely than environmentally harmful actions without a specific victim. All of the children perceived hurting plants/trees as the least severe action and passed no judgment on personal choices. Findings also showed some age differences in children's environmental judgments. Children in the 4-6 and 10-12 groups judged hurting another child more severely than hurting the environment. Children in the 7-9 age group evaluated harm to animals as harshly as harm to humans and condemned harming plants/trees significantly more than children in the other groups.
The overall findings of this study indicate that the severity with which children judge environmentally harmful actions seems to be related to children's frequency of contact with nature. Findings also indicate that children's evaluations of environmentally harmful actions depend on the victim of such actions. These findings may suggest that children with more nature exposure have had more opportunities to experience the consequences of transgressions to animals and the environment than children with low exposure to nature. This research provides some support for the idea that “interactions with nature may help children develop hallmarks of human morality, such as empathy, perspective taking and reciprocity”.
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