The Relationship of Preschoolers' Reasoning about Prosocial Moral Conflicts to Prosocial Behavior

EISENBERG-BERG, NANCY, and HAND, MICHAEL. The Relationship of Preschoolers' Reasoning about Prosocial Moral Conflicts to Prosocial Behavior. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1979, 50, 356-363. The purpose of the present study was to determine the relationship between preschoolers' moral reasoning about altruistic moral conflicts and their sharing, helping, and comforting in a naturalistic environment. 35 preschoolers aged 48-63 months were observed for a minimum of 70 2-min timings and responded to four simple moral-reasoning stories about helping and sharing. The results demonstrated that moral reasoning was differentially related to the various types of prosocial behavior. The children's sharing (particularly spontaneous sharing rather than sharing in response to a request) was significantly, negatively related to hedonistic reasoning and positively related to needs-oriented reasoning. Helping/comforting behaviors tended to be related to sociability in the nursery rather than to moral reasoning. Furthermore, the preschoolers did not use Kohlberg's stage 1 punishment and authority reasoning in their moral reasoning about helping and sharing conflicts. The children did use much hedonistic and needs-oriented reasoning.