Children's decision making: When self-interest and moral considerations conflict

- What do children do when their self-interests are at odds with moral considerations?
- Children did not incur a personal cost to accept an offering from a do-gooder.
- Children did incur a personal cost to reject an offering from a wrongdoer.
- Giving up profit from a dubious source is particularly difficult for children.
- Grappling with whether to do good or to do well emerges early in development.

When children's self-interests are at odds with their moral considerations, what do they do? In the current study of 5- and 6-year-olds (N = 160), we asked (a) whether children would select the offering of a do-gooder over a neutral individual at a personal cost, (b) whether they would reject the offering of a wrongdoer over a neutral individual at a personal cost, and (c) whether these two types of decisions involve comparable levels of conflict. In the absence of material considerations, children preferred a nice character to a neutral one, but this preference was easily overcome for material gain; children accepted a larger offering from a neutral source over a smaller offering from a nice source. In contrast, children's aversion to negative characters was largely unaffected by the same material consideration; they rejected a larger offering from a mean source in favor of a smaller offering from a neutral source. In addition, children's response times indicated that deciding whether or not to “sell out” to a wrongdoer for personal gain engenders conflict but that deciding whether to take a lesser gain from a do-gooder does not. These findings indicate that children weigh both their own material interests and others' social behaviors when selecting social partners and, importantly, that an aversion to wrongdoers is a more powerful influence on these choices than an attraction to do-gooders.