Children's and Adults' Attributions of Emotion to a Wrongdoer: The Influence of the Onlooker's Reaction

Abstract

We report three investigations in which participants attributed emotions of happy, sad, or scared to a wrongdoing story character who was seen by an adult authority figure, and a fourth in which participants were free to attribute any emotion. In study 1, 7-year-olds were no more likely to attribute sadness rather than fear to a wrongdoer when the witness was disappointed rather than cross, showing no support for the suggestion that during development, attributions of sadness based on others' disapproval replace attributions of fear based on expected punishment. In studies 2 and 3, 5-, 7-, and 10-year-olds and young adults gave more attributions of happy to a wrongdoer when the witness was mistakenly pleased, rather than appropriately disapproving, and more of scared in the latter case. Attributions of sadness were more commonly given by 7-year-olds when the witness was disapproving rather than mistakenly pleased, but the reaction of the witness made no difference to the incidence of sad attributions among 10-year-olds and young adults, consistent with the expectation that their attributions were based only on the morality of the act rather than on the reaction of others. However, at most about half the oldest children and the adults gave attributions of sad, suggesting that the actual reaction of a witness remains an important influence into adulthood. Even when young adults could attribute whichever and however many emotions as they wished to the wrongdoer, nearly one-third failed to attribute any moral emotion such as regret, shame, or guilt.