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Children's Moral Motive Strength and Temperamental Inhibition Reduce Their Immoral Behavior in Real Moral Conflicts
Author(s) -
Asendorpf Jens B.,
NunnerWinkler Gertrud
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.1992.tb01691.x
Subject(s) - psychology , cheating , social psychology , moral behavior , developmental psychology , moral development , rivalry , attribution , moral disengagement , morality , nonverbal communication , control (management) , political science , law , management , economics , macroeconomics
This study is concerned with the prediction of interindividual differences in children's immoral behavior in real moral conflicts by moral motive strength (appropriate attribution of moral emotions to story characters), temperamental inhibition, and ego control. Children were tempted to cheat at age 6 when they felt unobserved, or to contend for a scarce resource in peer triads at age 7. Moral motive strength and inhibition, but not ego control, predicted low cheating and low nonverbal rivalry to a similar extent. Extreme group analyses of children low or high in both traits showed that cheating/noncheating could be predicted with a hit rate above 90%. Nonverbal rivalry in a group increased exponentially with the number of low‐moral uninhibited children in the group, a finding replicated within the same sample. Discussion focuses on the influence of moral motive strength, temperamental inhibition, ego control, and their interaction on the reduction of immoral behavior.