Psychology
12 Oct 2016
“Don’t hit your brother” – moms are strictest on their infants’ moral wrongdoing
Moms respond more strongly to moral faults by infants than to other type of misbehavior, regardless of the potential harm, shows a new study. Research in the journal Frontiers in Psychology shows that mothers typically respond more strongly to any “moral” faults by their infants – that is, which risk hurting other people or pets – than to any other type of misbehavior. Even misbehavior that puts the infant herself, but no-one else, at potentially risk, for example running down the stairs, is generally disciplined less strongly by moms than moral wrongdoing. Conversely, infants are more ready to obey, and less likely to protest against, their mother’s prohibitions on moral faults than prohibitions on other types of misbehavior. These results indicate that mothers tend to treat moral wrongdoing as a special, more serious type of misbehavior, regardless of the potential harm. “Mothers were more insistent on the moral prohibition against harming others than prohibitions against doing something dangerous or creating mess or inconvenience, as shown by their greater use of physical interventions and direct commands in response to moral transgressions,” says the author Audun Dahl, Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. […]
