Understanding Perspectives and Emotions in Contract ...

Understanding Perspectives and Emotions in Contract Violation: Development

of Deontic and Moral Reasoning

Monika Keller, Michaela Gummerum, Xiao Tien Wang, and Samuel Lindsey

Children between the ages of 3 and 10 years were presented with a set of pictures representing a contract withbilateral cheating options between a parent and child (Study 1) and between 2 peers (Study 2). The children had to(a) evaluate which situations violated the contract when the relevant information was presented, (b) anticipate thefeelings of the violator and the victim, and (c) infer possible contract violation from 2 different perspectives whenrelevant information was covered. Results show that logical inferences about contract violation differ according tothe type of task. Negative feelings attributed to the violator were dependent on age and type of relationship,revealing a content-sensitive codevelopment of cognitive abilities and moral reasoning in young children.

How do children come to understand contract viola-tions and the emotions of violators and victims insuch cases? We investigated this question by con-necting two research fields that were previously un-related. In cognitive research, reasoning about rulesand contracts has been studied under the rubric ofconditional reasoning with a focus on deontic rules ofpermission and obligation: What can or must logicallybe the case in a given set of circumstances? Mostly,this line of research has not been interestedin developmental questions. In developmental re-search, on the other hand, the understanding of moralobligations has been studied in the tradition of theKantian deontological ethics of what is obligatory interms of moral principles. Moreover, the differentia-tion of moral rules from other types of social rules andthe feelings connected with the violation of obliga-tions have been investigated. The study of bilateralcontracts has not been addressed in moral develop-ment research. We want to show that the study ofcontracts allows a fruitful connection of the two fields

of research in which both cognitive and affective as-pects can be studied in a developmental framework.In the following we briefly outline the research fromthe two fields that is relevant for this study.

Development of Deontic Reasoning

In contemporary cognitive psychology, the un-derstanding of rules and contracts has been studiedwith methods created for research on conditionalreasoning. Research has focused on the question ofhow people understand disconfirmatory cases orrule violations. Both abstract and social rules aredefined as special cases of an ‘‘if p then q’’ relation-ship in which the presence of a certain rule (p) pre-scribes a certain condition or action (q). In theparadigmatic selection task (Wason & Johnson-Laird,1968), which has been predominantly used in thisresearch, a set of four cards is presented to a person.The visible side of each card represents one of thefour logically possible states of a conditional rule,that is, p, not p, q, not q. The hidden underside con-tains information about either the antecedent (p ornot p) or the consequent (q or not q) of the rule. Theperson is asked which of the four cards needs to bechecked (turned over) to determine whether the rule‘‘if p then q’’ has been violated. Research has shownthat adults have difficulty in correctly inferring ruleviolation cases in abstract logical tasks but performmuch more competently in tasks with social content(Evans, Newstead, & Byrne, 1993). In reasoningabout bilateral contracts, adults are competent inswitching between the different perspectives of thecontractors to detect contract violations. For ex-ample, in the case of the contract ‘‘if working on theweekend, a worker gets a day off during the week,’’

r 2004 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2004/7502-0025

Monika Keller and Michaela Gummerum, Max Planck Institutefor Human Development; Wang Xiao Tien, Department of Psy-chology, University of South Dakota; Samuel Lindsey, Max PlanckInstitute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, Freiburg,Germany.This research is part of the Center for Adaptive Behavior andCognition at the Max Planck Institute of Human Development inBerlin (director, Gerd Gigerenzer). We would like to thank JudithGluck and Kurt Kreppner for statistical advice; Jorg Bottcher, EvaEckermann, Maike Reimer, and Ilka Seide for data collection andprocessing; and teachers and pupils of Baeke-Elementary Schoolin Berlin for their cooperation. Masanori Takezawa and EdouardMachery gave thoughtful theoretical comments, and Anita Toddimproved the English considerably.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to

Monika Keller, Max Planck Institute for Human Development,Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin, Germany. Electronic mail may be sentto [email protected].

Child Development, March/April 2004, Volume 75, Number 2, Pages 614 – 635

respondents identified p and not q as possible vio-lations from the worker’s perspective (working onthe weekend and not getting a day off), and not pand q from the perspective of a factory owner (notworking on the weekend and taking a day off; Gi-gerenzer & Hug, 1992; Politzer & Nguyen-Xuan,1992). In general, it was easier for the respondents todetect the violation in the standard perspective re-ferring to p and not q than in the switched perspec-tive referring to not p and q.

The findings have given rise to a set of explana-tions as to why people are more competent in un-derstanding rule violations in social contexts. Theyrange from the cognitive explanation of the avail-ability of pragmatic reasoning schemas, such as per-mission and obligation schemes (Cheng & Holyoak,1985) to the explanation that people are evolutionarilyequipped with an algorithm for cheating detection.Cosmides and Tooby (1992) saw contractual ar-rangements as the basis of human (nonkin) coopera-tion where cheating is detrimental to the maintenanceof mutually beneficial patterns of reciprocal exchange.A cheating-detection device protects against cheatersor free riders who exploit trust in relationships, that is,take a benefit without paying the required cost orbeing denied the benefit having paid the cost.

Deontic reasoning is a less well understood topic inthe literature of children’s cognitive development.Because of the cognitive load of the selection task,researchers have designed various simplified versionsof this task to explore the developmental origins ofdeontic reasoning. In studies, 70% of 7- to 10-year-oldchildren were able to identify disconfirmatory cases ofrules such as ‘‘all buzzing bees must stay in the hive’’from pictures representing only the two possible out-comes, that is, being inside or outside the hive (q, not qcard; Girotto, Blaye, & Farioli, 1989; Light, Girotto, &Legrenzi, 1990). Cummins (1996) demonstrated thateven 3- and 4-year-olds could identify violators of anauthority rule such as ‘‘all squeaky mice must stay inthe house’’ if the relevant information was presentedin the pictures. Harris and Nunez (1996; Harris, 2000;Nunez & Harris, 1996) analyzed the understanding ofthe violation of parental commands in which a con-dition had to be fulfilled before a certain action wasallowed, for example, that a protagonist had to wear ahelmet if he or she went cycling. In this type of taskpreschool children were able to identify the rule-vio-lation case from a set of four pictures representing thepossible combinations of p and not p (cycling or notcycling), and q and not q (wearing or not wearing ahelmet). Children could also distinguish between therelevant violation (what is forbidden, e.g., p, not q,cycling with no helmet) from the irrelevant condition

(what is allowed, e.g., not p, q, not cycling but wearinga helmet). In contradistinction, in a study by Light,Blaye, Gilly, and Girotto (1989), older children couldnot distinguish between ‘‘must’’ and ‘‘may be’’ cases.They interpreted the rule that ‘‘all lorries have to beoutside the center of town’’ as bidirectional, conclud-ing that all other types of vehicles have to be inside thecenter (see Smith, 1993, for a discussion of the conceptof logical necessity).

Concerning the question of violation detection inbilateral contracts, Janke (1999, in press) used the se-lection task format and cued 10-, 13-, and 15-year-oldsinto the different perspectives of the two contractors.The results revealed developmental and perspectivedifferences. Across all three age groups, about 50% ofthe adolescents were correctly able to identify thestandard condition (p, not q). In the switched per-spective (not p, q), the youngest age group gave only afew correct solutions whereas about 50% of the 13-year-olds performed correctly. Again, with a mucheasier evaluation task, Nunez (1999) demonstratedthat children from the age of 3 years on could under-stand violations of bilateral contracts. Children wereshown a set of four pictures representing the logicallypossible combinations of an agreement between twochildren to swap their toys. Of the youngest children,80% correctly identified the picture of the ‘‘naughty’’wrongdoer (one child holding both objects) and of the‘‘good’’ child (having switched toys as agreed on).Overall, these results show that the understanding ofrule or contract violations depends on how the task ispresented to children, in particular, whether targetinformation is visibly presented or has to be inferred.

Development of Moral Reasoning

The study of moral development focuses on moralnorms and principles that define reciprocal obliga-tions in terms of corresponding rights and duties. Thefocus of this research has been on the justification ofmoral rules and obligations (Kohlberg, 1976); on thedistinction of moral rules from other types of rules,such as social conventions or authority rules (seeSmetana, 1995, for an overview); and more recently,on the attribution of emotions in the case of moral ruleviolations (Arsenio & Lemerise, 2001; Keller, Lour-enco, Malti, & Saalbach, 2003; Nunner-Winkler &Sodian, 1988). In all of this research, bilateral contractshave not been an object of interest, but the concept ofpromise keeping has been (Keller, 1984; Keller &Edelstein, 1990; Kohlberg, 1976). As contracts can beseen as mutual promising (Fried, 1981), the obligationof promise keeping is a particularly good example tooutline similarities and differences between research

Understanding Perspectives 615

on deontic reasoning and moral development.Through promises, people create legitimate expecta-tions about each other’s actions (Searle, 1969). Eachperson has a right to expect the action agreed on, andeach person is under an obligation to perform thisaction. The obligation to keep a promise can also beframed in cost–benefit terms (Richards, 1971) be-cause accepting the benefits of the rule of promisekeeping in general requires a person to pay the cost ofkeeping a promise, even if the person may not wantto do so. Thus, accepting a benefit without paying thecost constitutes a moral violation.

Developmental research has demonstrated (Kohl-berg, 1976; Youniss, 1980) that explicit cost –benefitcalculations of a person constitute a developmentallyearly and restricted type of understanding of re-ciprocal obligations. According to Kohlberg (1976),children at the first stage of preconventional moralreasoning interpret the obligation to keep a promiseas a unilateral authority rule in which one person(the authority) sets a rule and the other person (achild) has to obey. At the second stage, promisekeeping is interpreted in terms of an instrumental tit-for-tat exchange, such that the moral rightness ofpromise keeping results from the expectation that theother will reciprocate by also keeping his or herpromise when the situation occurs. At the third stage,promise keeping is seen to serve the function of es-tablishing and maintaining trust between persons.The findings by Keller (1984, 1996; Keller, Eck-ensberger, & von Rosen, 1989; Keller & Edelstein,1990, 1993) support the assumption of a develop-mental sequence of understanding promise keeping.But, consistent with other findings on moral reason-ing in children (Eisenberg, 1986; Turiel, 1983), thisresearch also documents that children have a genu-ine moral and empathic understanding that tran-scends obedience to authority and cost –benefitcalculations. They evaluate promise keeping as right,independent of sanctions and instrumental con-siderations. They anticipate the psychological con-sequences of promise violation for the feelings ofothers (empathy) and for the self (moral feelings) aswell as for the ongoing relationship. However,younger children do not understand moral rulessuch as promise keeping as strictly obligatory.Although they judge it as right to keep a promise,they frequently decide that a protagonist wouldbreak the promise because of subjective interests andgoals (Blasi, 1984; Keller & Edelstein, 1990, 1993). Thestudy of emotions in situations of violation of ob-ligations has given further insight into children’sunderstanding of obligations and the consequencesof violation of obligations.

Development of Understanding of Moral Emotions

In a series of studies on the happy victimizerphenomenon (Arsenio & Lover, 1995; Nunner-Wink-ler & Sodian, 1988), feelings after moral violationshave been studied from the different perspectives ofvictim and violator. It has been shown that for moralrule violations, such as stealing or physically hurtingsomebody, even young children anticipate the vic-tim’s negative feelings but they attribute positivefeelings to a violator. From about 6 or 7 years, how-ever, children reveal a developmental shift in attri-buting negative or ambivalent feelings to the violator(Lourenco, 1997), or at least when imagining the selfas violator (Keller, Edelstein, Fang, Hong, & Schuster,1996; Keller et al., 2003). Understanding the negativefeelings of a victim is a cognitively easier task thanunderstanding the feelings of the violator because itrequires assessment of the direct consequences of aviolation for someone else affected by it. In contrast,the understanding of moral feelings of a violatordepends on the establishment of a theory of mind andthe ability to coordinate self–other perspectives(Harris, 1989), such as evaluating the consequences ofan action in terms of a rule that forbids it. Concerningpromise keeping, Keller (1984, 1996) has shown thatchildren anticipate the negative feelings of a victim ofa promise violation before they attribute moral (ne-gative) feelings to the violator of the promise.

Whereas research on deontic reasoning has beenmore or less exclusively focused on cognitive as-pects, more recently two studies have addressed therelationship between deontic reasoning and emo-tions. Both studies, however, were concerned withthe feelings of the victim. Fiddick and Schultz (2000;Fiddick, 2003) were interested in different types ofrule violations and found that adults anticipate angeras the emotional consequence of moral rule violation.Nunez (1999) showed that even children between 3and 5 years of age attributed negative feelings to avictim in a situation of violation of reciprocal ex-change between peers. The feelings of the violatorhave not been addressed in this context even thoughthey are particularly interesting as a connection be-tween deontic reasoning and moral development.Contractual arrangements constitute an importantcontext in which rules of social exchange or co-operation and related feelings are experienced andlearned. Reciprocity-based cooperation (Frank, 1988;Trivers, 1971) requires both the ability to detectcheaters and the ability to understand people’s moralemotions. It requires the ability to detect cheatersbecause altruists might get exploited (Axelrod, 1984;Tooby & Cosmides, 1992). Moral emotions such as

616 Keller, Gummerum, Wang, and Lindsey

guilt and shame (but also anger) indicate that peopleare motivated to respect their contracts or promises.The philosopher Gibbard (1992) saw negative feel-ings of a victimFsuch as angerFand negativefeelings in a violatorFsuch as shame or guiltFascorrelated feelings that arise in the event of a viola-tion of reciprocity or cooperation. One might addsadness and disappointment as similar (i.e., nega-tive) emotional reactions of the victim of a violation.Commitment problems can be solved by emotionsonly if the cooperators are able to understand others’emotions. Thus, one can suggest that the capacity totake part in cooperative projects requires both thecompetence to detect cheaters (including deonticreasoning competence) and the competence to un-derstand others’ moral emotions (anger, guilt,shame, etc.). These two competencies are constitutivecomponents of our evolved competences to take partin cooperative endeavors.

The two studies presented here explore the re-lationship between the understanding of a contractviolation and the anticipation of emotions in a con-tract in which both contractors can be violators andvictim. Given the findings on the happy victim-izer attribution, it seems that the understanding offeelings of victim and violator are not necessarilycorrelated in development. In addition to the devel-opmental question, we are interested in the psycho-logical conditions of the context that may influenceboth the understanding and the emotions attributedin a particular situation.

Study 1

In the first experiment we studied how children’sunderstanding of contract violation in a mother–child contract with bilateral violation options isconnected with the anticipation of emotions fromthe different perspectives of victim and violator.This question is innovative in the field of deonticreasoning research because (a) bilateral contracts ina family context have not been studied in youngerchildren and (b) the emotions of violators have notbeen addressed so far. From the perspective of moraldevelopment, the research is innovative because (a)bilateral contracts have not been a topic of researchand (b) the emotions attributed to rule violatorshave not been studied in a context involving thedifferent perspectives of the contractors. We chose amother– child contract because we assumed thatthis presents a context that is relevant to the every-day experience of children where obligations aretypically established, negotiated, and violated. Thisfamiliarity with the context should facilitate the

understanding of the contract and the perspectivesinvolved.

Concerning deontic reasoning, we assumed thatpreschool children could identify contract violationsin a family context when the cognitive load of thetask is reduced and the different perspectives ofchild and mother contractors are presented in thecognitively easy form of the evaluation task. Incontrast, we expected developmental differences inthe selection task, which has a high cognitive load,because target information is hidden and has to beinferred (see the Method section for description ofthe tasks). Furthermore, we expected that childrenwould understand contract violation better from theperspective of the child protagonist, which in ourtask also represents the standard perspective (p, notq), compared with the perspective of the mother,which represents the switched perspective (not p, q).This effect should be present in both the evaluationand the selection task. Gender effects have usuallynot been of interest in deontic reasoning.

Concerning attribution of emotions, we expectedthat even younger children would understand that avictim of a contract violation feels bad and thereforewould attribute negative feelings to both child andmother as victim. Concerning the feelings of the vio-lator, we expected a developmental and a perspectiveeffect: In general, with increasing age, children shouldmore frequently attribute negative (moral) emotionsto both child and mother as violator. However, theanticipation of moral feelings from the perspective ofthe child might be developmentally easier becausechildren have more access to the experience ofsomeone like themselves compared with the feelingsof a parent. This difference might decrease with agewhen children can more easily switch between per-spectives. Gender effects have not played a role in theattribution of emotions to transgressors (Arsenio &Lover, 1995; Nunner-Winkler & Sodian, 1988), butresearch on emotions has sometimes revealed thatgirls are more prone to guilt feelings (Kochanska,Gross, Lin, & Nichols, 2002). Therefore, in a familycontext girls might attribute moral (negative) feelingsmore frequently than boys.

For the relationship between deontic reasoningand emotion attribution, we assumed that it wouldbe easier for children to identify correctly the twopossible unilateral contract violations in the evalua-tion task than to attribute the morally adequate feel-ings to a violator. In contrast, because of the highcognitive load of the selection task, we expected thatchildren would more frequently attribute the morallyadequate negative feelings to a violator than correctlyinfer the contract violation cards in the selection task.


Method

Participants

We tested 122 children (58 girls, 64 boys) aged 3 to10 years. Children were recruited from a kindergar-ten and an elementary school in former West Berlin.Participants came from middle- to upper-middle-class families in terms of economic status. About 90%of the participants were of German origin, and mostof the remaining children had a Turkish background.

Participants were combined into three groups:preschool and kindergarten (21 girls, 19 boys; meanage5 5.3 years), Grades 1 and 2 (21 girls, 20 boys;mean age5 6.9 years), and Grades 3 and 4 (16 girls,25 boys; mean age5 8.9 years).

Procedure

Children were interviewed individually, and an-swers were transcribed verbatim by the interviewer.The children were told a story in which the boy Maxiand his mother made a contract: ‘‘If Maxi keeps hisroom orderly for the next two weeks, then he will geta bike for Christmas’’ (see Appendix A). The coverstory allows for contract violation from both sides:Mother had to leave town and therefore did notknow how the room looked during her absence. Onthe other hand, it was not certain that she would beback in time to buy the bike.

Evaluation task: Understanding contract violationwhen relevant information is pictorially presented. Fourcards represented the logically possible states: contractfulfillment (p, q: room clean and a bike), unilateralcontract violation byMaxi (not p, q: room not clean buta bike) or Mother (p, not q: room clean but no bike),and contract violation from both sides (not p, not q:room not clean and no bike). Morally relevant are onlythe two unilateral violations, with either Maxi orMother as violator or correspondingly as victim.

The four picture combinations were described asfour different endings of the story. It was explained thatthe upper half of two pictures showed what Maxi’sroom looked like (clean or not clean), and the lowerpart showed whether Maxi got a bike for Christmas ornot (bike or no bike). The other two pictures showed inthe upper part whether Maxi got a bike or not and inthe lower part whether the roomwas clean or not clean.The children were asked to indicate for each cardwhether the agreement between Maxi and Mother wasviolated and to give a reason for their decision.

Attribution of feelings. For each of the four cards inthe evaluation task, children were asked how Maxiand Mother felt and to give a reason for these feelings.

Selection task: Inferring contract violation from dif-ferent perspectives. The task was introduced as aguessing game in which each of the four cards re-vealed only half of the contract information, with theother half not visible on the back. The front of twocards showed how the room looked (clean or notclean, p or not p), and the hidden back of each cardcontained the information on whether Maxi got a bikefor Christmas or not (q or not q). The other two cardsshowed on the front whether Maxi got a bike forChristmas or not (q or not q), and the back containedthe information on whether Maxi’s room was clean ornot clean (p or not p). Each card was explained byindicating what was on the front and what might beon the back. The backs of the cards were not shownbecause in pretests, children, especially the youngest,had tried to memorize the back.

After the instructions the interviewer restated theagreement as well as the fact that both Mother andMaxi did not knowwhat the other would really do. Tomake the guessing game ecologically valid, childrenhad to take successively two different observer per-spectives for checking possible unilateral contractviolation. The order of the perspectives was counter-balanced.

Perspective of friend (checking for possible contractviolation by Mother). Children were told that Maxihad a good friend who really wanted Maxi to get thebike because he knew that Maxi would let him rideit. Children were told: ‘‘Imagine you are Maxi’sfriend and you are afraid that his mother did notarrive early enough to buy the bike so that theagreement might be broken.’’ Correct card selectionsfrom Friend’s perspective are p (room cleanFdidMaxi get a bike?) and not q (Maxi did not get abikeFis the room clean?).

Perspective of brother (checking for possible contractviolation by Maxi). Children were told that Maxi hada brother who was jealous because he also wanted tohave a bike. The children were told: ‘‘Imagine youare Maxi’s brother and you know that Maxi issometimes naughty and that it has happened in thepast that Maxi has not kept agreements. Therefore,you suspect that Maxi did not clean his room whilemother was absent so that the agreement might bebroken.’’ Correct card selections from Brother’sperspective are not p (room not cleanFdid Maxiget a bike?) and q (Maxi got a bikeFis the roomclean?).

Children were asked to select one or more of thefour cards that might indicate contract violation andgive reasons for the selection: ‘‘Which card do youhave to turn over to know whether Mother/Maxibroke the agreement? Why do you have to check this


card? Is there another card you have to check? Whydo you have to check this card?’’

Evaluation of Fairness of Outcome

At the end of the interview children were allowedto turn each card and see the back. They were askedfor each card whether the outcome was fair or unfairand to give reasons for their judgment.

Results

Hilog-linear model procedures within SPSS-X/VMS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences,1990) were performed to test main and interactioneffects of the independent and dependent variables.To estimate single parameters, log-linear modelswere computed. Only the two theoretically relevantunilateral contract violations were included in thestatistical analyses. We started by fitting a hier-archical log-linear model that contained the theo-retically expected interactions and the main effectscovered by these interactions. Additionally, wechecked in the saturated log-linear model, whichincluded all variables, for statistically significant in-teractions that we had not predicted. The model fit(w2) of the hilog-linear model procedure with para-meter estimations (z values) is presented in the text.The reference category of each factor for the z valuesis indicated by r. A model having a value greaterthan p5 .05 is considered to be fitting. Furthermore,in a good-fitting model, w2 and degrees of freedomshould be of about equal size (Eye, von Kreppner, &Wessels, 1994).

Evaluation Task

Two scores were defined: Choice indicates whichpicture combination(s) children identified as contractviolation. Justification indicates whether both ele-ments of the contract violation were mentioned, thatis, that the room was clean but Maxi had not gotten abike (p, not q) or that the room was not clean but hehad gotten a bike (not p, q). Reliability of choice was100% agreement between two independent raters.Reliability of justification was 88% for two in-dependent raters.

Only a few young children evaluated the p and qpicture representing contract fulfillment as contractviolation. However, more than 80% of the youngestgroup and about 70% of the two older groups eval-uated the combination of not p and not q (room notclean, no bike), where both contractors failed, ascontract violation (see Table 1). Analysis of the jus-tifications revealed that about 50% of the childrenacross all age groups interpreted Mother’s contractviolation as the consequence of Maxi’s violation(‘‘She did not give him a bike because the room wasnot clean’’) and neglected the fact that Mother couldnot know whether Maxi had cleaned his room. In thefollowing statistical analyses we focus on the twotheoretically relevant unilateral violations.

Correct choice of violation cards. The first log-linearmodel included the factors: (a) choice of cards: notchosen (r), chosen; (b) type of violator: Mother (r),Maxi; and (c) grade: preschool, Grades 1 and 2 (r),Grades 3 and 4. We expected a significant Choice� Grade interaction and Choice � Type of Vio-lator interaction, and a three-way of Choice �

Table 1

Study 1: Percentages of Cards Chosen in Evaluation Task and Selection Task and Feelings Attributed to Violator as a Function of Age and Gender

Kindergarten and

preschool

First and second

grades

Third and fourth

grades

Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys

Evaluation task

Room clean/bike (p, q) 14 (3) 16 (3) 5 (1) 0 0 0

Room not clean/bike (not p, q) 76 (16) 58 (11) 90 (19) 95 (18) 100 (16) 88 (22)

Room clean/no bike (p, not q) 57 (12) 68 (13) 81 (17) 65 (13) 94 (15) 52 (13)

Room not clean/no bike (not p, not q) 90 (19) 78 (15) 57 (12) 75 (15) 69 (11) 72 (18)

Selection task (correct card choices)

Perspective friend (p, not q) 0 0 24 (5) 20 (4) 75 (12) 28 (7)

Perspective brother (not p, q) 10 (2) 0 33 (7) 35 (7) 75 (12) 32 (8)

Negative feelings of violator

Maxi 38 (8) 26 (5) 24 (5) 20 (4) 56 (9) 52 (12)

Mother 19 (4) 56 (9) 44 (8) 60 (12) 92 (12) 77 (17)

Note. Absolute frequencies (N ) are in parentheses.


Grade � Violator interaction. The predicted modelproduced a statistically significant fit of w25 17.03,df5 12, p5 .15. Log-linear analyses showed an ageeffect independent of type of violator. In general, thefrequency of correct answers was high. But themiddle and oldest group gave significantly morecorrect answers than the youngest group (zs5 � 2.47and � 2.33, respectively), whereas the two oldergroups did not differ from each other (Table 1, Figure1). Concerning perspective, more children correctlychose the picture with Maxi as violator than thatwith Mother as violator (z5 2.91). Furthermore, thesaturated model revealed a statistically significantChoice � Sex interaction, which we had not pre-dicted. Independent of age, girls gave more correctchoices than did boys (z5 2.15). It may be because ofthis effect that the model fit of the theoretically pre-dicted model is less good, as indicated by the im-balance between w2 and degrees of freedom.

Correct justification of violation. We predicted thesame Justification � Grade, Justification � Type ofViolator, and Justification � Grade � Violator inter-actions as in the previous model. The model fit wasw25 14.22, df5 12, p5 .29. With increasing age, chil-dren gave more correct justifications. Children fromthe middle and oldest groups gave significantlymore correct justifications than children from theyoungest group (zs5 � 3.29 and� 4.35, respec-tively), but there was no significant difference be-tween the children from the middle and the oldestage groups (Figure 1). Contrary to our expectations,there was no effect of type of violator. The saturatedmodel revealed no further statistically significanteffects.

Relationship between choice and justification. McNe-mar tests revealed statistically significant differences

(po.00) in all three age groups and for both types ofviolator. Children performed better in choosing thecorrect card (intuitive judgment) than in giving anadequate reason for their choice (see Figure 1).

Attribution of Feelings in Evaluation Task

For statistical analyses, emotions were categorizedas positive or negative. Positive emotions (n) in-cluded concepts such as good (199), happy and joy-ful (176), and other positive words (11). Negativeemotions (n) were more varied and included notgood or bad (199), sad (71), annoyed (58), mean (41),not happy or unhappy (30), surprised (36), stupid(23), afraid (18), unfair, bad conscience (8), strange(7), or other (36). All negative emotions were taken toindicate an awareness of the problematic aspect ofthe unilateral violation. Ambivalent (both positiveand negative) feelings were mentioned infrequentlyand were scored as negative emotions. Interrateragreement concerning the coding of emotional at-tributions was 93% for two independent raters.

Feelings of victim. With few exceptions, victimswere described as experiencing negative feelings.Therefore, we excluded this variable from furtheranalyses.

Feelings of violator. The hilog-linear model in-cluded the variables of: (a) feeling: positive (r), neg-ative; (b) type of violator: Maxi (r), Mother; (c)grade: preschool, Grades 1 and 2 (r), Grades 3 and 4;and (d) sex: boys (r), girls. We predicted the Fee-ling � Grade, Feeling � Type of Violator, Fee-ling � Sex interactions, and a three-way Feeling �Type of Violator � Sex interaction. The model fitwas w25 12.81, df5 12, p5 .38. Log-linear analysisshowed a statistically significant effect of age. Chil-

Figure 1. Evaluation Task: Correct Solutions, Correct Justifications, and Attribution of Negative Feelings in Family Context (in %).


dren in the middle group did not differ from theyoungest group but attributed negative feelings lessfrequently than the oldest children (z5 3.80; Table 1and Figure 1). Although we had predicted a sig-nificant effect of type of violator, the direction of thiseffect was not as we expected. Children attributednegative feelings more frequently to Mother com-pared to Maxi as violator (z5 3.03). Neither sex ofchild nor the three-way interaction was statisticallysignificant. The saturated model revealed no furthersignificant effects.

Selection Task

Children had to infer possible contract violationfrom the two different perspectives of Friend andBrother, controlling for Mother’s or Maxi’s contractviolation. Correct selection was scored when chil-dren selected for each perspective the two theoreti-cally correct cards (p and not q, or not p and q). Thepreschool children were excluded from statisticalanalysis because they selected the two correct cardsvery infrequently (see Table 1).

Correct selection of violation cards. The log-linearmodel included the variables selection of: (a) bothcards: not correct (r), correct, (b) perspective: Friend(r), Brother; and (c) grade: Grades 1 and 2 (r), Grades3 and 4. We predicted that the Cards � Grade andCards � Perspective interactions contributed sig-nificantly to the explanation of the data. The modelfit, with w25 1.56, df5 4, p5 .82. Overall, the partici-pants from the oldest age group chose the two rel-evant cards more frequently than did children fromthe middle age group (z5 2.55). Contrary to our ex-pectations, no significant effect of perspective wasobtained. The saturated model revealed an additionalCards � Sex interaction and a significant three-wayCards � Grade � Sex interaction. Girls gave morecorrect selections than did boys across all age groups(z5 2.95). Furthermore, this sex difference wasgreater in the oldest than in the middle age group(z5 � 2.57). The nonpredicted effects may explainwhy the predicted model did not have a good fit.

Correct justification of choices in the selectiontask. The justifications for each card selection re-vealed card-specific differences in children’s abilityto take into account the covered information. As canbe seen in Figure 2, participants from the middle andoldest age groups gave mostly correct justificationsfor the selection of cards p, q, and not q. Correctjustification seemed to occur most frequently for thep card (room clean), where children correctly in-ferred that they must know whether Maxi got a bike.In contrast, in the selection of the not p card (room

not clean), reasons focused predominantly on thevisible information. Children concluded that thecontract was violated because Maxi had not cleanedthe room. Thus, they did not take into account that inthis case the bilateral contract was violated only ifMaxi had gotten a bike from the mother.

Relationship Between Feelings of Violators andUnderstanding of Contract Violation

Evaluation task. We used McNemar tests to ex-plore whether children performed equally well inunderstanding contract violation and in attributingnegative feelings to a violator (Table 1 and Figure 1).No difference was found for Mother as violator (p,not q card). Children who correctly indicated theviolation also attributed negative feelings to Mother.In the case of Maxi as violator (not p, q card), sig-nificantly more children indicated the unilateralviolation correctly than attributed negative feelingsto Maxi. For children who gave a correct justificationfor their choice, no systematic relationship betweenunderstanding and the attribution of negative feel-ings to the violator was found in the different agegroups (see Figure 1).

Selection task. McNemar tests revealed that it wassignificantly easier for children to attribute negativefeelings correctly to Mother as violator than to identifycorrectly the two cards that might indicate contractviolation by Mother (p and not q cards). No differencebetween the two tasks was obtained in the case ofMaxi as violator because significantly fewer childrenhad attributed the correct negative feelings in theevaluation task to Maxi compared to Mother (Table 1).

Evaluation of Fairness

After turning each card, most children from thetwo older age groups (between 80% and 90%) judgedcontract fulfillment as fair and the two unilateralviolations as unfair. For the preschool children, thesefrequencies were considerably lower. Furthermore,the older children evaluated Mother as violator morefrequently as unfair (58%) than Maxi as violator(38%). Concerning violation from both contractors,most children from the older age groups judged theoutcome as fair compared with only 23% of theyoungest children.

Discussion

This study explored the development of deonticreasoning about a bilateral contract and the emotionsinvolved in contract violations in a mother– child


relationship. In the family, bilateral contracts arefrequently established, negotiated, and violated;therefore, children may experience the emotionalconsequences of a contract violation, especially whenthe interests of the self are violated. This experienceshould make it easier for younger children to un-derstand and infer contract violation and anticipatethe emotional consequences of such a violation.

Understanding and Inferring of Contract Violations

In the evaluation task in which the relevant con-tract information was presented, our results supportthe assumption of a less salient developmental effect:Even the youngest children were successful inidentifying the unilateral contract violation of boththe child and the mother, although they performedsignificantly less well than the two older groups. The

lower frequencies in understanding cheating in theyoungest children, as compared with the study byNunez (1999), may have been found because theunderstanding of the bilateral contract violation inour study was cognitively more demanding: First,the actions of the contractors were delayed in time,and second, Nunez’s task (swapping toys) allowedthe representation of each of the four logically pos-sible combinations in one picture instead of a com-bination of two pictures, as in our task. Althoughchildren seem to have an intuitive understanding ofthe unilateral violations, they have difficulties injustifying violations correctly. Research in the Pia-getian tradition has revealed similar differences be-tween task performance and verbal explanation,including children’s conditional reasoning aboutsyllogisms (Schroder & Edelstein, 1991). In our con-text we cannot fully exclude that a more elaborate

Figure 2. Selection Task: Correct Inferences of Individual Cards in Family Context (in %).


probing of the answers or a different type of contractmight have reduced this salient effect.

Consistent with our expectations of a perspectiveeffect, children were better at identifying contractviolation when the child was the violator. This maybe because children can more easily empathize withthe contract violation by the child, whereas they mayin general not expect a contract violation from amother. Furthermore, the child violation constitutesthe standard perspective (p, not q), which in mostcases has been shown to be easier to understand thanthe switched perspective (not p, q). Children inter-preted the ‘‘not clean room’’ as a contract violationand did not take into account that the contract wasbroken only if Maxi had gotten a bike. This logicalerror may result from their everyday experience:Children normally have the task of cleaning theirroomFeven if they do not get a reward for it. Thisinterpretation is consistent with the fact that themajority of children from all age groupsFand par-ticularly the youngest childrenFjudged the logicallyirrelevant condition (not p, not q) as a contract vio-lation from Maxi’s side: Mother did not give Maxi abike because he had not cleaned the room. Thus, theydid not consider the theory-of-mind aspect of the sit-uation, where Mother could not know whether Maxihad fulfilled his side of the contract and therefore hadto act on the belief that Maxi would clean his room asagreed on. From the moral point of view, however,children differentiated between contract violationfrom both sides, which they judged as fair, and uni-lateral violations, which they judged as unfair.

Concerning the selection task, our results showthat the expected facilitation effect of context did notoccur for the preschool children, who were not ableto identify the two target cards correctly from thetwo different perspectives. The performance of theolder groups is similar to the findings of Janke (1999,in press) and Overton, Ward, Noveck, Black, andO’Brien (1987), where about 40% to 50 % of 10-year-olds correctly identified the standard perspective,but only 30% were able to solve the switched per-spective. In our study we could replicate a similareffect of perspectives only in the evaluation task andnot in the selection task. This may indicate that thecontent of the contract is of greater importance thanpreviously thought.

In the selection task, more children were correctlyable to identify one compared to the two logicallycorrect cards. Consistent with the expected develop-mental effect, the youngest children gave fewer cor-rect justifications than did the older children.Children from all three age groups, however, cor-rectly selected the not p card (room not clean) in the

switched perspective, but more frequently withwrong justifications: They again assumed that thecontract was broken because Maxi had not cleanedhis room, thus neglecting the outcome information ofwhether Maxi had gotten a bike. In the justification ofall other card selections, children correctly referred tothe hidden information on the back. This result showsthat common-sense understanding can underminelogical inference. It is an open question whether re-phrasing of the instructions to focus attention on bothaspects of the contract might change this result.

The unexpected gender effect that girls both in theevaluation task and in the selection task performedbetter than boys is not easy to explain. Gender effectshave not played a role in the research on deonticreasoning. The effect may therefore be due to thespecific task or to a general developmental ad-vancement of the girls in particular at the beginningof adolescence.

Attribution of Feelings

Our findings support previous results in the lit-erature on moral rule violations (Arsenio & Lover,1995) that children of all ages do understand thenegative feelings of a victim of a contract violation.This holds true independent of whether the motheror the child is the victim. The use of undifferentiatedconcepts of good and bad is consistent with otherliterature on children’s moral judgments (Gibbs,Basinger, & Fuller, 1992; Keller, 1984). Harris (1989)showed that more complex feeling concepts emergedevelopmentally later. Contrary to our expectations,but consistent with previous findings in the happyvictimizer tradition, girls did not anticipate morenegative feelings than did boys.

The attribution of feelings to the violator revealedin all age groups the predominance of a happy vic-timizer attribution to the child violator who hasachieved a desired goal and therefore is expected tohave positive feelings. In contradistinction, the at-tribution of feelings to the mother as violator sup-ports the assumption of a developmental shift inemotion attribution frequently reported in the lit-erature (Arsenio & Lover, 1995; Nunner-Winkler &Sodian, 1988). One explanation for this finding maylie in the special relationship between mothers andtheir children. Children may have experienced intheir own lives that mothers give them a benefit eventhough they have failed to fulfill an obligation. Suchmaternal inconsistency might be considered as moralluck by the child: to get something even though onehas not deserved it. Mother’s act of giving Maxi abike is interpreted as an act of caring and forgiving


that produces positive feelings in the child. It is ex-actly what children mostly expect from their moth-ers. Conversely, children evidently expect that themother would feel bad if she had failed in theagreement. In the case of the mother’s feelings,children did not expect a happy victimizer view-point: Only a few children mentioned that Motherwas happy because she did not buy a bike.

Relationship Between Understanding of ContractViolation and Feeling Attribution

Because of the context specificity in under-standing violation and in the attribution of feelingsto the violator, the relationship between the twovariables is not consistent. Only in the case of Motheras violator did children who understood the viola-tion correctly also attribute the adequate negative(moral) feeling more frequently. In the case of Maxias violator, understanding the violation was ad-vanced because the emotion attribution revealed nodevelopmental effect. This situation-specificity ofemotion attribution also influenced the relationshipwith the selection task. No difference was foundbetween the attribution of negative feelings to Moth-er and the corresponding perspective in the selectiontask, whereas a difference was obtained for theemotions and the perspective of Maxi. We can con-clude from this finding, more clearly than fromprevious research, that the attribution of feelings isnot only dependent on developmental competence;rather, the relationship between cognitive and af-fective aspects is also dependent on the specificcontext of the situation. To come to a more conclusiveresult it is necessary to vary dimensions of the con-tract as well as of the relationship.

In a post hoc analysis of our contract situation, it isimportant to note that the two violation or cheatingoptions were presented differently: as voluntary forthe child (not cleaning the room during the mother’sabsence) and (for ethical reasons) as nonvoluntary forthe mother (she might not come back early enough tobuy the bike). Thus, the mother’s contract violationwas excused by unforeseen circumstances. From ourfindings, it seems that children were not fully awareof this intentional –accidental dimension. Intentionsare an important factor that children can take intoaccount in less complicated situations of deonticreasoning (Nunez & Harris, 1996). A study by Barrett(1999) showed that adults were much better incheating detection when they suspected intentionalcheating. Furthermore, the type of violation should beconsidered. According to the domain-specific theoryof moral development by Turiel and his colleagues

(Nucci, 2001; Smetana, 1995; Turiel, 1998) we haveused a mixed-domain task involving a conventionalobligation (cleaning one’s room) and moral obliga-tions, such as a unilateral violation of a contract. Toavoid this domain mixture, we explored a differentcontractual arrangement in a second study.

Study 2

The purpose of the second experiment was to ex-plore a contract that avoided domain mixture and inwhich violations from both contractors are of equalimpact. Furthermore, because it was not clear thatchildren in the previous study had really understoodthe bilateral contract, some changes in the experi-mental procedure should improve children’s un-derstanding, especially in the selection task.

We chose a contract in a peer relationship becauseit has been frequently discussed in the literature(Piaget, 1932/1965; Youniss & Damon, 1992) thatpeer relationships represent a context in whichsymmetrical reciprocal exchanges between personsof equal power are given. Moreover, friendship isparticularly important for the development of un-derstanding of moral obligations and responsibilities(Keller, 1984, 1996). Therefore, we can assume thatcompared to the parent – child context, friendshiprepresents a more optimal condition for the under-standing of bilateral contracts. We chose a contractinvolving the prosocial obligation of helping, whichis an important topic in children’s friendships (Sel-man, 1980; Youniss, 1980). Although helping be-tween friends in some situations is strictly obligatory,there are other situations in which it is not. In suchsituations, when (non-necessary) help is requested, abenefit may be offered for it. However, even infriendship children may violate such an agreementor have the experience of violation by a friend (Kel-ler, 1984; Keller, Edelstein, Schmid, Fang, & Fang,1998; Krappmann, 1989).

Nunez (1999) has shown that even preschoolchildren understand bilateral agreements in a peerrelationship. The task she used (swapping toys) isless cognitively demanding than the task in thisstudy (see the Method section). The more compli-cated version of our task was necessary because itallowed us to assess the understanding of violationin both the evaluation and the selection task. FromNunez’s study, we know that children attribute neg-ative feelings to the victim of a peer violation.However, the feelings of the violatorFthe main fo-cus of our studyFhave not been addressed.

Concerning deontic reasoning, we expected thatmore children would solve the tasks correctly, in


particular, the cognitively more demanding selectiontask. In contrast to our previous findings, we ex-pected no perspective effects in the evaluation taskbecause both the contract and the violation wereexplicitly stated. In the selection task, however, weassumed that differences between the standard (p,not q) and the switched (not p, q) perspective wouldbe maintained because these effects have been dem-onstrated in adolescents and adults.

Concerning attribution of emotions, we assumedthat the perspective effect of the previous study wasdue to both the asymmetric type of relationship(parent – child) and the specific content of the contractthat may have been interpreted as a rule of obedience.In a contract in a symmetrical and voluntary peerrelationship, violations from both contractors may bemorally equally severe. Thus, we expected that in theviolation of a bilateral contract between friends, neg-ative (moral) feelings would be attributed to bothcontractors as violators. Therefore, no effect of per-spective or type of violator should be found. As in theprevious study, however, we predicted a develop-mental effect and expected that girls might be moreprone to attributing negative feelings to the violator.

We decided to interview the same children be-cause the within-comparison design allowed us tominimize the possible influences of between-subjector between-study factors. The effect of practice canbe seen as positive because it should help childrengain familiarity with the complicated selection task.It seems implausible that the attribution of moralfeelings could be reduced to such a practice effect.

Method

Participants

Of the previous 122 children, 90 (46 girls, 44 boys)were reinterviewed about 6 months later. For furtherstatistical analyses, they were pooled into the samethree age groups: kindergarten and preschool (8 girls, 8boys; mean age56.00 years), Grades 1 and 2 (23 girls,14 boys; mean age57.57 years), and Grades 3 and 4 (15girls, 22 boys; mean age59.59 years). The high differ-ence in number of the youngest children was mostlyattributable to children changing to different schools.

Procedure

Children were interviewed individually and allanswers were transcribed verbatim. They were told astory in which two friends made an agreement: ‘‘IfJohannes helps Peter in the garden, Peter will let himride his new bike’’ (see Appendix B). In contrast tothe first study, we made explicit what was forbidden

or what should not happen given the violation of theagreement: ‘‘But if Johannes does not help Peter inthe garden, then he must not use Peter’s new bike.’’Through this negation children should become sen-sitive to the relevant violation cases.

Again, there was a possibility for contract violationfrom both sides. Children were told that ‘‘Johannesreally wants to ride Peter’s new bike but he does notreally like helping in the garden. He is also not quitesure whether Peter will really let him ride the bike.’’

Evaluation task: Understanding contract violationwhen relevant information is visible. Pictures of thefour logically possible combinations of p and q werepresented to the child (see Appendix B): contractfulfillment (p, q: help, bike), contract violation byeither Johannes (not p, q: no help, bike) or Peter (p,not q: help, no bike), and contract violation from bothsides (not p, not q: no help, no bike). The two uni-lateral violations (not p, q; p, not q) represent thetheoretically relevant contract violations.

The four picture combinations were described asfour different endings of the story. The procedurewas slightly changed to facilitate understanding, inparticular, in the selection task. This time, the left partof each picture showed whether Johannes washelping Peter in the garden and the right partshowed whether Johannes rode the bike. The fourcards were shown to the child sequentially in ran-dom order. For each card, the child was asked wheth-er the agreement between Johannes and Peter hadbeen violated and to give reasons for this judgment.

Attribution of feelings. Children were asked for thetwo unilateral violation pictures how Johannes andPeter felt in this situation and to give reasons forthese feelings.

Selection task: Inferring contract violation from dif-ferent perspectives. In contrast to the first study, inwhich information was hidden on the back of thecard, this time one half of the picture combinationwas covered and presented as a window that couldbe opened later. This was intended to facilitate un-derstanding. Children were told that the left part ofthe first two pictures showed whether Johanneshelped Peter in the garden and the covered right parthad the information on whether Johannes used or didnot use the bike. For the other two cards, the rightside showed whether Johannes used the bike or notand the covered left side contained the informationon whether Johannes helped or did not help Peter. Allfour cards were explained individually by pointingout what happened in the visible part and whatmight be seen under the covered part.

After the instructions children were asked to retellthe agreement and were told what was allowed and


what was not allowed. This information was repeatedwhen necessary. In addition, the child was remindedof the possibility of contract violation from both sides.Again, children had to check for possible contractviolations from two different observer perspectives.

Perspective of Johannes’s brother (checking for contractviolation by Peter). The children were told that Jo-hannes has a brother who is suspicious of Peter. Theywere told: ‘‘Imagine you are Johannes’s brother andyou suspect that Peter is not keeping the agreementand does not let Johannes use the bike even thoughJohannes has helped him in the garden.’’ Correct cardselections from the perspective of Johannes’s brotherare p (Johannes helpedFdid he get the bike?) and notq (Johannes did not use the bikeFhad he helped?)

Perspective of Peter’s brother (checking for contractviolation by Johannes). The children were told thatPeter has a brother who is suspicious that Johannes isusing the bike without helping Peter in the garden.They were told: ‘‘Imagine you are Peter’s brotherand you suspect that Johannes is not keeping theagreement and is using the bike even though he hasnot helped.’’ Correct card selections from the per-spective of Peter’s brother are not p (Johannes didnot helpFdid he use the bike?) and q (Johannes usedthe bikeFhad he helped?).

The children were asked: ‘‘Which window do youhave to open to know whether Peter/Johannes brokethe deal? Why do you have to open this window? Isthere another window you have to open? Why doyou have to open this window?’’

Results

As in Study 1, statistical analyses were performedaccording to theoretical predictions. Additionally,

statistically significant effects in the first study wereincluded in the predictions for the second study.

Evaluation Task

The variable choice indicates whether childrenpointed at the two correct picture combinations rep-resenting unilateral violation (p, not q, and not p, q).Justification is correct if a child states both elementsof the contract violation, for example, that Johannesdid not help and/but he used the bike. Interrateragreement for justifications between two indepen-dent raters was 89%.

Very few children judged the picture combinationrepresenting contract completion (help, bike) as aviolation (see Table 2). Overall, 75% of the youngestage group (kindergarten and preschool) evaluatedthe ‘‘no help, no bike’’ condition as contract violationcompared with only 51% and 22% in the two olderage groups. Thus, the older children evaluated de-fection from both sides increasingly less as contractviolation. Justifications of the older children weremostly adequate whereas the youngest children fo-cused exclusively on the antecedent not p, that Jo-hannes did not help. But they neglected the aspectthat Johannes did not use the bike.

Correct choice of violation cards. The hilog-linearmodel included the factors: (a) choice of cards: notchosen (r), chosen; (b) type of violator: Peter (r), Jo-hannes; (c) grade: preschool (r), Grades 1 and 2,Grades 3 and 4; and (d) sex: male (r), female. Wepredicted a Choice � Grade interaction and, becauseof the findings from the first study, a Choice � Sexinteraction. This model revealed a statistically sig-nificant fit of w25 12.87, df5 8, p5 .12. However, nosignificant interaction effects were obtained in the

Table 2

Study 2: Percentages of Cards Chosen in Evaluation Task and Selection Task and Feelings Attributed to Violator as a Function of Age and Gender

Kindergarten and

preschool

First and second

grades

Third and fourth

grades

Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys

Evaluation task

Help/bike (p, q) 0 0 4 (1) 0 0 0

No help/bike (not p, q) 100 (8) 100 (8) 91 (21) 93 (13) 100 (15) 100 (22)

Help/no bike (p, not q) 100 (8) 88 (7) 91 (21) 79 (11) 93 (14) 96 (21)

No help/no bike (not p, not q) 100 (8) 63 (5) 61 (14) 36 (5) 20 (3) 23 (5)

Selection task (correct card choices)

Johannes’s brother (p, not q) 0 25 (2) 52 (12) 57 (8) 73 (11) 59 (13)

Peter’s brother (not p, q) 38 (3) 50 (4) 74 (17) 71 (10) 93 (14) 73 (16)

Negative feelings of violator

25 (4) 13 (2) 57 (26) 57 (16) 82 (23) 54 (22)

Note. Absolute frequencies (N ) are in parentheses.


log-linear analyses (see Figure 3). The fit of the modelcan be attributed to the significant main effects ofchoice and grade (zs5 7.02 and 2.62, ns). Almost allparticipants chose the correct picture. The significantgrade effect is theoretically irrelevant because it in-dicates that our sample was not balanced, specificallyconcerning the number of participants in the young-est age group. The saturated model revealed no fur-ther significant effects.

Correct justification of violation cards. We predicteda Justification � Grade interaction. The model fit,with w25 26.95, df5 20, p5 .14. Only the main effectsof justification (z5 7.86) and grade (z5 � 2.72, ns)were statistically significant. The children chose thecorrect justification significantly more often than theincorrect justification. The significant main effect forgrade can again be attributed to the imbalancedsample. In the saturated model we found a non-expected Justification � Grade � Sex interaction(z5 2.06, ns). Girls in the youngest age group per-formed significantly better than boys, but this dif-ference did not exist in the older age group.

Comparisons of Choice and Justification

McNemar tests showed that across all age groupsno difference was found between correct justifica-tions and the correct choices of violation pictures.Thus, choosing the correct card was not easier for thechildren than choosing and giving the correct justi-fication for their choices.

Attribution of Feelings in Evaluation Task

As in Study 1, emotional attributions were codedinto the categories of positive and negative feelings.

Interrater agreement concerning the coding of emo-tional attributions was 94% for two independentraters. Disagreements were resolved through dis-cussion.

Feelings of victim. Almost all children attributednegative feelings to the victims of contract violation.Therefore, we excluded this variable from furtheranalysis.

Feelings of violator. The hilog-linear model includedthe variables: (a) feelings: positive (r), negative; (b)grade: preschool, Grades 1 and 2 (r), Grades 3 and 4;and (c) sex: male (r), female. We predicted Feelings�Grade and Feelings� Sex interactions. This model didnot fit the data. The saturated model showed that onlythe Feelings� Grade interaction was significant (z5 �3.42, ns), indicating that the two older age groups at-tributed negative feelingsmore frequently to the violatorthan did the youngest age group, but the two older agegroups did not differ. However, even in the two olderage groups, about 35% of the children attributed positivefeelings to the violator (see Figure 3 and Table 2).

Selection Task

Children had to infer possible contract violationfrom the different perspectives of the two brothers ofthe protagonistsFcontrolling for Peter’s (p, not qcards) or Johannes’s (not p, q cards) possible contractviolation. Correct selection was scored if the childrenidentified the two correct cards for each perspective(see Table 2). Correct justification was scored for in-dividual card selections if the children referred to thecovered information of the chosen cards (Figure 4).

Correct selection of violation cards. The hilog-linearmodel included correct selection of: (a) both cards:

Figure 3. Evaluation Task: Correct Solutions, Correct Justifications, and Attribution of Negative Feelings in Peer Context (in %).


not correct (r), correct; (b) grade: preschool, Grades 1and 2 (r), Grades 3 and 4; (c) perspective: Johannes’sbrother (r), Peter’s brother; and (d) sex: male (r), fe-male. We predicted Cards � Grade and Cards �Perspective interactions, and Cards � Sex and Se-lection � Grade � Sex interactions because they hadturned out to be significant in the first study. Themodel fit, with w25 6.59, df5 13, p5 .92. Only theCards � Grade interaction (z5 � 3.24, ns) andCards � Perspective interaction (z5 2.73) were sta-tistically significant. Children from preschool chosethe correct violation cards significantly less fre-quently than did children from the two older age

groups, though children from the two older agegroups did not differ. Moreover, from the perspectiveof Peter’s brother (Johannes did not help but used thebike; not p, q; switched perspective), participantsmade more correct selections than from the perspec-tive of Johannes’s brother (see Table 2). Contrary tothe findings of the first study, we found no interac-tions involving gender, which may be one cause forthe lower model fit.

Correct justification of choices in the selectiontask. The justification for individual cards revealedno card-specific differences in the children’s abilityto take into account the covered information (see

Figure 4. Selection Task: Correct Inferences of Individual Cards in Family Context (in %).


Figure 4). Only children in the youngest age groupgave, with one exception, fewer correct justificationsfor their choices (about 20% difference).

Relationship Between Attribution of Feelings andUnderstanding of Contract Violation

Evaluation task. McNemar tests showed that foreach age group and for each type of violator thechildren significantly more frequently correctly un-derstood the violation pictures than they attributedthe morally adequate negative feelings to the viola-tors (see Figure 3).

Selection task. McNemar tests showed no differ-ences between the frequencies of correct card selec-tion in the selection task and correct attribution offeelings. This result held for each age group and foreach type of violator.

Discussion

The second study investigated the development ofdeontic reasoning about a bilateral contract and theunderstanding of emotions in the case of contractviolations in a peer relationship. Results of Study 1indicated that children interpreted the agreementbetween mother and child in terms of their generaleveryday knowledge in a context of obedience in aunilateral or asymmetrical relationship. Contrary toour previous assumptions, this context might haveprevented a clear understanding of the bilateralcontract. A contract between peers should make iteasier for children to understand a bilateral contractbecause of the symmetrical structure in this re-lationship (Keller, 1984; Krappmann, 1989; Selman,1980; Youniss, 1980). In contrast to Study 1, theconsequences of violating the agreement in terms ofwhat was forbidden in the case of unilateral contractviolation were also pointed out to the children.

Understanding and Inferring Contract Violations

The contract presented to the children requiredthem to take into account the actions of the two peercontractors who could both violate the contract.Overall, children showed an increase in correct un-derstanding across all tasks. This difference can beattributed to the combined effects of practice, varia-tion in the experimental procedure, and the nature ofthe task.

In the evaluation task, the expected develop-mental and gender effects no longer appeared. Al-most all participants from kindergarten to Grade 4,boys and girls equally, correctly chose the cards de-

picting a unilateral contract violation. Contrary tothe findings of Study 1, no significant differencesbetween correct choices and correct justificationwere obtained. Furthermore, as we had expected forthe peer context, the two unilateral contract viola-tions could be identified equally well. The irrelevantcondition (not p, not q: no help, no bike) was acrossage increasingly less evaluated as a contract viola-tion. This replicates the findings of Nunez (1999) thatkindergarten children can identify violators of a bi-lateral contract between peers in a cognitively lessdemanding task, even though our task was morecomplicated than hers. However, our results alsoshow that the youngest children have slightly moredifficulty in adequately justifying their choices.

Compared with previous studies and our Study 1,children performed better in the selection task, andeven some children from the youngest age groupperformed competently. This is interesting, even if wecannot disentangle whether this result can be attrib-uted to a practice effect, the method, or the peer sit-uation facilitating more correct answers than theparent–child situation. Contrary to previous research,with both adults and adolescents (Gigerenzer & Hug,1992; Janke 1999, in press), the effect of perspectivewas reversed: The identification of the standard per-spective target cards (p, not q: help, no bike) proved tobe more difficult than the switched perspective cards(not p, q: no help, bike). This finding indicates that thecontent of the contract matters: Even in a bilateralcontract between two (equally powerful) peers, chil-drenmay interpret the agreement from their everydayexperience. As research on the development offriendship reasoning has frequently shown (e.g., Big-elow & LaGaipa, 1975; Keller, 1996; Youniss, 1980),helping is considered a major characteristic in pre-adolescents’ friendship concept. Children mighttherefore consider not helping a friend in the gardenbut using the bike to be a more serious violation thanhelping and not getting the bike as a reward.

With the exception of the correct justification inthe evaluation task in which girls performed better,no gender effects were obtained in Study 2. Thisfinding can be interpreted by referring to our design:It might be possible that because of practice effects,the developmental advantage of girls diminished inStudy 2. In general, gender effects have not beenreported in the deontic reasoning literature.

Attribution of Feelings

The findings of Study 2 support previous researchon moral development theory (Arsenio & Lover,1995) and our expectations: Almost all children un-


derstood the negative feelings of a victim of contractviolation. For the feelings of the violator, however,the developmental effect remained salient in spite ofa possible practice effect. Consistent with our ex-pectations concerning the attribution of feelings topeer violators, the results of Study 2 revealed noperspective effect. For both types of violators, chil-dren from the middle and oldest groups significantlymore frequently attributed negative (moral) feelingsto the violator than did the youngest children. Thus,older children take into account the reciprocal ob-ligations between the two contractors and thereforeattribute negative feelings to both violators. How-ever, the results do not fully support the idea of adevelopmental switch from positive to negativefeelings, as postulated by Nunner-Winkler and So-dian (1988). Even in the two older age groups, be-tween 30% and 40% attributed positive feelings tothe violator in spite of their understanding that acontract violation had taken place. This finding isconsistent with the results of Arsenio and Lover(1995), who also found a less dramatic develop-mental change. One explanation for this finding maybe that some children do not judge this type of vio-lation as serious. We discuss this finding more ex-tensively in the General Discussion.

Relationship Between Understanding of Violation andEmotion Attribution

In Study 2 it was easier for children to identifycorrectly a unilateral contract violation than toattribute the morally correct negative feelings to theviolators. Performance in the selection task and theattribution of moral feelings were equally difficult.Thus, in the context of a peer relationship in whichboth contractors are of equal power, the results forcognitive and affective variables are in the same di-rection and reveal a similar developmental trend.

General Discussion

The studies presented here have connected twopreviously unrelated research fields: deontic rea-soning about rules and contracts in cognitive psy-chology, and moral understanding in the cognitivedevelopmental tradition. We chose bilateral contractviolations and the emotions elicited by these viola-tions to demonstrate how these two lines of researchcan be fruitfully connected. In moral developmentresearch, the study of bilateral contracts has beenneglected. In deontic reasoning research, on the otherhand, the understanding of bilateral contracts hasbeen mostly studied with adults, neglecting devel-

opmental factors. Furthermore, deontic reasoningresearch has been exclusively focused on cognitiveprocesses. The relationship between the under-standing of social rule violations and emotions has,with few exceptions, been neglected. The connectionbetween these two research fields allows us to ad-dress interesting questions that have not been raisedbefore.

Concerning deontic reasoning, the two studiesshow that even young children understand uni-lateral contract violations in parent and peer re-lationships in tasks that are cognitively lessdemanding than the selection task. The develop-mental component becomes stronger in the cogni-tively more complex selection task, even when thecontent of the contracts draws on children’s experi-ences. However, compared with the few studies thathave been performed with children, our findingsshow that even first- and second-grade childrensolve the selection task remarkably well with meth-odological improvements and some practice. On theother hand, children’s correct justifications lag be-hind their judgments. Thus, full understanding ofthe selection task depends on higher order cognitiveprocesses. This becomes clear even in the cognitivelyless demanding evaluation task, where children donot correctly understand the logically irrelevantcondition. For the older children, the content of thetask diminishes this error, but not so for the youngestchildren. In contrast to previous research with adultsand children, our results also documented that theswitched perspective can be easier than the standardperspective. Therefore, the content of the task is ofgreater importance than previously assumed.

The assumption of a cheating-detection device(Cosmides & Tooby, 1992) might explain the detectionof contractual violations in the social world. How-ever, developmental differences in the understandingof violations and the affective consequences of theseviolations within the social world of relationships arenot taken into account in this framework. One con-clusion that can be drawn from our results is thatthere seems to be no single process or general rule ofreasoning that is applied to different contract situa-tions. Rather, the understanding of contract violationsand their affective consequences seems to be influ-enced by several factors, including the type of re-lationship, the a priori obligations that exist in theserelationships, and the specific content of the contract.In contradistinction to economic contracts, whichclearly specify costs and benefits, agreements in closerelationships such as that of parent and child or be-tween friends can be defined as quasi-contracts thatare based on more or less specific a priori expecta-


tions. Children make sense of a particular contract inlight of their general experiences and their knowl-edge of obligations in these relationships. Thus, notcleaning a room or not helping a friend is interpretedas a violation of an obligation even thoughFin termsof the contractual arrangement in our studiesFit isonly a violation if a benefit is accepted when the costis not paid. Helping each other is a particularly im-portant social practice and a mutually expected be-havior in friendship, which is based on affection,mutual trust, and intimacy. This may be one reasonwhy children are more sensitive to unilateral vio-lations in friendship. For friendships, practices of rec-iprocity are constitutive, and serious moral violationsmay terminate the relationship. Moral feelings indi-cate an actor’s commitment to cooperation practices,and this is particularly important for the maintenanceof voluntary relationships such as friendship, wherethe victim has to forgive the violator so that the re-lationship can be maintained. Parent – child relation-ships, on the other handFas all kin relationsFaremaintained despite violations and are thus not asdependent on practices of reciprocity. The result that,also in the friendship context, a substantive numberof older children attributed positive feelings to bothviolators may be explained by the fact that childrenmay not evaluate such violations as serious moraltransgressions that would terminate the relationship.

Our findings are also in line with some importantdistinctions that have been emphasized in moraldevelopment theory. Consistent with domain theory(Smetana, 1995; Turiel, 1998), we interpret the resultsof Study 1 in terms of a confusion between conven-tion and morality that may have existed. Participantsseemed to interpret the bilateral contract betweenparent and child in terms of a conventional authorityrule of obedience. In Study 2, this confusion could beavoided by presenting the bilateral contract in asymmetrical peer relationship (Youniss & Damon,1992). However, as we varied both the type of re-lationship and the type of contract, it remains opento future research to test experimentally the questionof whether the same contract in different types ofrelationships is interpreted in the same way or to testsystematically different types of violation of obliga-tions. One further possibility might be to use a taskthat avoids the existence of a prior social conven-tional obligation, perhaps one in which contracts aremade between adults and children over neutral is-sues. This would perhaps allow us to compare morereadily the effect of peer or adult status on children’sreasoning about contracts.

The observational work of Dunn (1988) has giveninsight into how young children come to understand

moral violations in their world of everyday socialexperiences. These experiences can be distinguishedaccording to different types of role relationships,different types of rules or rule violations, and theconsequences of such violations for self and others.The expectation of reciprocity in relationships is de-veloped, in terms of what is allowed and not allowedand what is obligatory for the maintenance of re-lationships. In these relationships, children encounteror experience certain emotions through events inwhich expectations of trust and reciprocity are vio-lated. Both parent– child and peer relationships arebased on mutual trust and cannot be adequatelydescribed in terms of economic and instrumentalexchange models. The concept of trust has recentlyreceived increasing attention in economics (Fu-kuyama, 1996). The work by Youniss (1980), Selman(1980), and Keller (1984, 1996) has traced the devel-opment of moral expectations in parent– child andpeer relationships from childhood to adolescence. Inthis research it has been shown that sociomoral un-derstanding varies developmentally with the contentof the task and type of relationship. The findingsfrom the two experiments presented in this papersupport the conclusions from this researchFthat theunderstanding of violations of reciprocity and theemotions associated with these violations is trans-formed in the process of development.

Concerning the attribution of moral emotions toviolators, our findings support both developmentaleffects and a more salient influence of context thanprevious research has shown. The more clear-cutdevelopmental effect in the second study speaksagainst the assumption of a practice effect. Rather,this effect may be due to the content of the task. Inthe parent – child contract even the oldest children inour study attributed positive feelings to the child asrule violator. It would be interesting to know wheth-er in the parent – child contract more elaboratequestioning might have revealed an understandingof mixed feelings, as was the case in research byLourenco (1997). Furthermore, Keller et al. (2003)have shown that children much more frequently at-tributed moral feelings when they were asked abouthow they themselves as transgressors would feel.Such a self –other differentiation has been frequentlyobserved in the literature (Epley & Donning, 2000).

We believe that connecting deontic reasoning andmoral developmental theory leads to interesting newquestions and insights (see Fiddick, 2003). Findingsin deontic reasoning research could be classified ac-cording to the framework of domain theory so thatsystematic differences between domains could beexplored (Smetana, 1995; Turiel, 1998). Similarly, re-


search on the development of moral emotions couldbenefit from taking into account the interactionamong domain, situation, and perspective in theexploration of social rules and bilateral contracts(Wiersma & Laupa, 2000).

Appendix A

1. Contract story: This is a story about Maxi, his fa-mily, and his friends. Here is what happens betweenMaxi and his mother. Christmas is approaching.Maxi really wants to have a good new bike. His

mother says to him: You never really cleaned yourroom. Maxi knows that. Now, Maxi and his mothermake an agreement:

IF Maxi keeps his room tidy for the next two weeks,THEN he will get a bike for Christmas.

Since they made this agreement, Maxi has alwayskept his room tidy. But then his mother has to go on atrip for two weeks. So, his mother cannot know whatMaxi’s room looks like during the time she is away.And Maxi does not know whether his mother willcome back in time to buy the bike for Christmas (seeFigure A1).

FigureA1.


Appendix B

1. Contract story: This is Johannes and this is hisfriend Peter. Peter just got a new bike. Johannesreally wants to ride the bike. Therefore, Johannes andhis friend Peter make an agreement:

IF Johannes helps his friend Peter in the garden, THENhe can ride Peter’s new bike. But IF Johannes doesn’t helphim in the garden, THEN he must not ride the bike.

Johannes really wants to use Peter’s new bike. Buton the other hand, he doesn’t like working in thegarden and he is not sure whether Peter will really let

him use the bike. But he could just take the bike be-cause he knows where Peter keeps it (see Figure B1).

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