Impact of Promise On the Moral Judgement of Young Children

Recent claims that very young children have at least an intuitive understanding of morality has been subjected to an empirical test. 42 children ranging in age from 4 years and 8 months to 6 years and 6 months were taken from a local nursery school. Each subject was presented two short stories, one involving "Promise" in an interpersonal situation and the other not involving any Promise ("No-promise") in a similar situation. The subject's judgement was invited on the happening of the stories in such a way that it could be seen whether S differentiates between Promise and No-promise stories. The findings reveal that 5-6 years old children understand the concept of "Promise" and their judgement of social events is affected by this understanding. The failure of 4-year-old in the task was attributed to the difficulty in comprehending the content of the story material. Some culture-specific reasons have been brought forward to explain unexpected responses.