Pre-school children's understanding of the emotional consequences for failures to act prosocially

This study compares 4- and 5-year-old children's assessment of the emotional consequences of failures to act prosocially with their assessment of the emotional consequences for prosocial and victimization situations. After listening to stories illustrating each of the socio-moral situations, children rated the emotional consequences for an actor, recipient and observing teacher and justified their ratings. Findings show that pre-school children's emotion ratings for failures to act prosocially differed from their emotion ratings for prosocial and victimization behaviours. Preschool children's ratings of an actor's emotions depended on the presence or absence of an observing teacher in prosocial and victimization situations, but not in failures to act prosocially. This study illustrates the complexity of young children's reasoning about failures to act prosocially and highlights the importance of contextual influences on children's understanding of socio-moral emotions.