Biases in children's and adults' moral judgments.

Two experiments examined biases in children's (5/6- and 7/8-year-olds) and adults' moral judgments. Participants at all ages judged that it was worse to produce harm when harm occurred (a) through action rather than inaction (omission bias), (b) when physical contact with the victim was involved (physical contact principle), and (c) when the harm was produced as a direct means to an end rather than as an unintended but foreseeable side effect of the action (intention principle). The youngest participants, however, did not incorporate benefit when making judgments about situations in which harm to one individual resulted in benefit to five individuals.

Children's understanding of counterfactual emotions: age differences, individual differences, and the effects of counterfactual-information salience.

The present study investigated developmental trends in the effects of the salience of counterfactual alternatives on judgments of others' counterfactual-thinking-based emotions. We also examined possible correlates of individual differences in the understanding of these emotions. Thirty-four adults and 102 children, 5-8 years of age, were presented scenarios in which characters would be expected to experience regret.