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A Mind-Reader Does Not Always Have Deontological Moral Judgments and Prosocial Behavior: A Developmental Perspective

Overview of attention for article published in Frontiers in Psychology, August 2016
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Title
A Mind-Reader Does Not Always Have Deontological Moral Judgments and Prosocial Behavior: A Developmental Perspective
Published in
Frontiers in Psychology, August 2016
DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01261
Pubmed ID
Authors

Jian Hao, Yanchun Liu

Abstract

The rationalistic theories of morality emphasize that reasoning plays an important role in moral judgments and prosocial behavior. Theory of mind as a reasoning ability in the mental domain has been considered a facilitator of moral development. The present study examined whether theory of mind was consistently positively associated with morality from middle childhood to late adulthood. Two hundred and four participants, including 48 elementary school children, 45 adolescents, 62 younger adults, and 49 older adults, completed theory of mind, moral judgment and prosocial behavior tasks. Theory of mind was measured with strange stories that tapped into an understanding of lies, white lies, double bluffs, irony, and persuasion. Moral judgments were measured with variants of the trolley dilemma. Prosocial behavior was measured through participants' performance in an interactive situation in which a helping request was made. The results indicated specific rather than similar developmental trajectories of theory of mind, moral judgments, and prosocial behavior. There was a quadratic trend in theory of mind, a combination of quadratic and cubic trends in deontological moral judgments and a linear decline in helping behavior. It is thus suggested that theory of mind may not be associated with morality in an unchanging way during development. Further results indicated that theory of mind and deontological moral judgments were negatively correlated for children, adolescents, and older adults but positively correlated for younger adults. Theory of mind and helping behavior were positively correlated for children but negatively correlated for adolescents. However, the relationships disappeared in adulthood. In sum, the present study reveals that theory of mind may be a nice tool for its facilitation of deontological moral judgments and prosocial behavior, but it may also be a nasty tool for its blocking of deontological moral judgments and prosocial behavior. Moreover, theory of mind may be a permanent tool for moral judgment development but a temporary tool for prosocial behavior development. Thus, the present study enriches the rationalistic theories of morality from a developmental perspective. Different relationships between theory of mind and morality from middle childhood to late adulthood are discussed.

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 57 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 57 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Bachelor 9 16%
Student > Master 8 14%
Student > Ph. D. Student 7 12%
Researcher 4 7%
Lecturer 2 4%
Other 10 18%
Unknown 17 30%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 25 44%
Medicine and Dentistry 4 7%
Environmental Science 1 2%
Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science 1 2%
Unspecified 1 2%
Other 4 7%
Unknown 21 37%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 17 September 2016.
All research outputs
#8,483,416
of 25,312,451 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Psychology
#12,267
of 34,187 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#124,926
of 351,956 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Psychology
#210
of 405 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,312,451 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 43rd percentile – i.e., 43% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 34,187 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.2. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 63% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 351,956 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 48th percentile – i.e., 48% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 405 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 47th percentile – i.e., 47% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.