Abstract

This study was conducted to examine three-year-old children can use intention and intentionality in moral judgement. Ninety-one preschoolers age from three to six were asked to judge the character of each of six stories is good or bad, and how much he/she is good os bad on four point scale. Then, children were asked to assign size or punishment to the character on five point scale. Results showed that children as young as three can use intention information for malting moral judgment: Three-year-old children rated it a little good when the negative outcome was caused by good intention, but they rated it worse when the same negative outcome was caused by bad intention. And three-year-old children rated it much better when the positive outcome was caused by good intention than when the same positive outcome was caused by bad intention. Similar pattern was obtained in children's assigning prize or punishment. In addition, three-year-old children can discriminate between intentional outcome and accidental outcome. Age foot, five, and six group showed the similar pattern to that of age three group in moral judgment.