Do preschoolers view the environment as a moral concern? Two related studies were conducted to address this question. While both studies investigated preschoolers' moral assessments of environmentally destructive behaviors, one included an experiment to determine if preschoolers' moral evaluations could be influenced using a perspective-taking task.
For Study 1, 24 preschool children (age 3-5) participated in a card-sorting task based on their moral judgments of three different types of behaviors: (a) behaviors that harm the environment, (b) behaviors that harm other people, and (c) non-harmful behaviors. Twelve cards were used in total, with four for each of the categories. The children were asked to sort the cards, one at a time, into three containers: one with a smiley face for OK behaviors; one with a frowning face for behaviors that were “a little bad;” and one with a more exaggerated frown for behaviors that were “very bad.” While all the children judged non-harmful behaviors as the least negative, there were age differences in how children evaluated behaviors that harmed the environment and those that harmed other people. Three-year-old children equated behaviors that harmed the environment with those that harmed people. The older preschoolers, however, rated behaviors that harmed people as being significantly worse than those that harmed the environment.
The 30 preschool children participating in Study 2 completed the same card-sort activity, but only after first completing a perspective-taking task. This task involved having children take the perspective of fictional book characters who were either the victims or the perpetrators of environmental harm. None of the children from Study 1 participated in Study 2; and the perspective-taking task for children in Study 2 was based on random assignment. Results of the card-sort activity indicated that the perspective-taking task did not affect children's judgments of behaviors that harm people and non-harmful behaviors. There were differences, however, in how the children judged behaviors harming the environment. Children who took the perspective of the victim of environmental harm rated environmentally harmful behaviors more severely than children who took the perspective of a character who caused environmental damage.
These studies together indicate that children as young as three judge environmentally-harmful actions as morally wrong. These findings also indicate that taking the perspective of a fictional character affects moral judgments, with the effects depending on how the character treats the environment. This research suggests that perspective-taking activities may be an effective means of promoting environmental concern.
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