Children's Moral Emotions, Narratives, and Aggression: Relations With Maternal Discipline and Support

Children who attribute more positive emotions to hypothetical moral victimizers are typically more aggressive and have more behavior problems. Little is known, however, about when individual differences in these moral emotion attributions first emerge or about maternal correlates of these difference...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of genetic psychology 2014-11, Vol.175 (6), p.528-546
Main Authors: Arsenio, William, Ramos-Marcuse, Fatima
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aggression
Aggression - psychology
Aggressiveness
Behavior Problems
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child development
Child discipline
Child, Preschool
Developmental psychology
emotion attributions
Emotions
Emotions - physiology
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Individual Differences
Male
maternal discipline
moral narratives
Morality
Morals
Mother-Child Relations - psychology
Mothers
Narration
Narratives
Parenting - psychology
Preschool Children
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Social Support
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Summary:Children who attribute more positive emotions to hypothetical moral victimizers are typically more aggressive and have more behavior problems. Little is known, however, about when individual differences in these moral emotion attributions first emerge or about maternal correlates of these differences. In this study, 63 4-6-year-olds judged how they would feel after victimizing peers for gain and enacted event conclusions using narrative methods adapted from the MacArthur Story Stem Battery. In addition, children's mothers completed assessments of their disciplinary styles and social support, and children's aggressive tendencies were assessed based on ratings from mothers and a second familiar adult. Results revealed that most preschoolers expected to feel happy after their victimizing acts, but variations in happy victimization were unrelated to children's aggression. Several of children's narrative themes, including making amends (e.g., apologizing, reparations), aggressive acts, and mentions of death/killing, however, were related to children's aggression. Moreover, two maternal disciplinary dimensions, higher warmth and reasoning, as well as greater social support were also related to lower child aggression. Children's emotion attributions and moral narratives, however, were unrelated to maternal disciplinary practices or social support.
ISSN:0022-1325
1940-0896
DOI:10.1080/00221325.2014.982497