A Mind-Reader Does Not Always Have Deontological Moral Judgments and Prosocial Behavior: A Developmental Perspective

Abstract

The rationalistic theories of morality emphasize that reasoning plays an important role in moral judgments and prosocial behavior. Theory of mind as a reasoning ability in the mental domain has been considered a facilitator of moral development. The present study examined whether theory of mind was consistently positively associated with morality from middle childhood to late adulthood. Two hundred and four participants, including 48 elementary school children, 45 adolescents, 62 younger adults, and 49 older adults, completed theory of mind, moral judgment and prosocial behavior tasks. Theory of mind was measured with strange stories that tapped into an understanding of lies, white lies, double bluffs, irony, and persuasion. Moral judgments were measured with variants of the trolley dilemma. Prosocial behavior was measured through participants' performance in an interactive situation in which a helping request was made. The results indicated specific rather than similar developmental trajectories of theory of mind, moral judgments, and prosocial behavior. There was a quadratic trend in theory of mind, a combination of quadratic and cubic trends in deontological moral judgments and a linear decline in helping behavior. It is thus suggested that theory of mind may not be associated with morality in an unchanging way during development. Further results indicated that theory of mind and deontological moral judgments were negatively correlated for children, adolescents, and older adults but positively correlated for younger adults. Theory of mind and helping behavior were positively correlated for children but negatively correlated for adolescents. However, the relationships disappeared in adulthood. In sum, the present study reveals that theory of mind may be a nice tool for its facilitation of deontological moral judgments and prosocial behavior, but it may also be a nasty tool for its blocking of deontological moral judgments and prosocial behavior. Moreover, theory of mind may be a permanent tool for moral judgment development but a temporary tool for prosocial behavior development. Thus, the present study enriches the rationalistic theories of morality from a developmental perspective. Different relationships between theory of mind and morality from middle childhood to late adulthood are discussed.

Keywords: deontological moral judgment; development; moral judgment; prosocial behavior; theory of mind.

Figure 1

Performance on the theory of mind task. (A) The mean score of each age group by theory of mind story type. (B) The mean total theory of mind score of each age group. Error bars represent standard error.

Figure 2

Performance on the moral judgment task. (A) The percentage of participants in each age group judging that it was morally impermissible to harm the innocent person by dilemma type. (B) The mean rating of the moral permissibility of harming the innocent person in each group by dilemma type. Higher ratings represent greater impermissibility. Error bars represent standard error.

Figure 3

Performance on the prosocial behavior task. (A) The percentage of participants in each age group displaying helping behavior. (B) The mean number of questions with which each age group helped. Error bars represent standard error.