Children's Differentiations among Potential Recipients of Aid

EISENBERG, NANCY. Children's Differentiations among Potential Recipients of Aid. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 54, 1983, 594-602. The purpose of this study was to determine whom children prefer to assist and how their discriminations among potential recipients of aid change with chronological age and moral development. 125 elementary and high school children were interviewed to assess their level of moral judgment regarding prosocial behavior and the discriminations that they make when thinking about helping various individuals (e.g., family and friends, disliked others, someone from a different country). In general, the most important discriminations for both older and younger children were between family and friends versus others and disliked individuals versus others. The tendency to make differentiations based on the recipient's identity decreased with age, especially for distinctions involving disliked others and criminals. Furthermore, children who verbalized higher-level prosocial moral reasoning were somewhat less likely to differentiate among potential recipients of aid (particularly if the distinction concerned family and friends, disliked others, criminals or people of a different race or religion). When the effects of age were controlled, the relationships between the tendency to differentiate among recipients and level of moral judgment were reduced but frequently were still statistically significant.