Abstract

Development of preschool children's understanding of moral and social-conventional rules was examined in two experiments. In Experiment 1, stories depicting familiar moral and social-conventional transgressions were presented. Preschoolers were asked to judge permissibility, seriousness, generalizability and rule-contingency of the transgressions. 3- and 5-year-olds distinguished moral and social-conventional rules only on the criterion of seriousness: They judged moral transgressions to be worse than social-conventional ones. In Experiment 2, preschoolers were asked to judge seriousness, authority-contingency, rule-contingency, and generalizability of the same transgressions presented in Experiment 1. Questions for criterion judgements were modified to be more understandable to the subjects. 3- and 5-year-olds distinguished moral and social-conventional rules only on the criteria of seriousness and generalizability: They judged moral transgressions to be worse and to be more generalizably wrong than social-conventional ones.