The Relationship between Moral Judgment, Egocentrism, and Altruistic Behavior

RUBIN, KENNETH H., and SCHNEIDER, FRANK W. The Relationship between Moral Judgment, Egocentrism, and Altruistic Behavior. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1973, 44, 661-665. 55 7-year-old children were administered cognitive measures of communicative egocentrism and moral judgment and were provided with 2 opportunities to display altruistic behavior--(a) to donate candy to poor children and (b) to help a younger child complete a task. Success on the 2 cognitive measures was positively correlated with the incidence of altruistic behavior in both altruism conditions. With mental age partialled out the correlations between the cognitive measures and donating candy were significantly lower than the correlation between the cognitive measures and helping. The difference between the correlations was accounted for by the fact that only in the candy donation were there cues that helped the subject attend to the possibility of emitting an altruistic act. Finally, the communicative and moral judgment measures were significantly correlated.