Abstract
Previous research on adults’ moral licensing and cleansing suggested the moderating role of psychological distance: psychologically close actions generate behavior opposite in valence that would restore moral balance, while distant actions motivate similar behaviors, as they are abstractly conceptualized as identity features. We adapted an experimental paradigm previously used in this area, that of recalling past moral and immoral behaviors, and used it in two studies on children (N = 285) aged 7 to 10 years. In each, we varied the temporal distance (recent vs. distant) to and valence (moral, immoral, and neutral) of the recalled behavior, and then we measured children’s altruism. In the second study, we also explored the mediating role of present versus retrospective guilt within the relationships between recalling immoral behavior and present altruism. In contradiction with the general results of research conducted among adults, our results only highlighted a moral cleansing effect of recalling immoral behavior from the distant past, a condition in which children in both studies behaved more altruistically compared to most of the other conditions. Additionally, the guilt experienced in the present towards the recalled behavior was a potential mediator of this cleansing effect. A potential explanation of this difference from the results on adults could reside in children’s lower abstraction abilities and the differences in the intensity of guilt associated with distant and recent behaviors.
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The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Maftei, A., Holman, AC. Children’s altruism after recalling recent and distant morally-valenced behavior and the mediating role of guilt. Curr Psychol 42, 5490–5504 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01872-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01872-8