Does Role Playing Improve Moral Reasoning's Structures in Young Children?

Abstract

This chapter presents a research on moral judgment with pre-school and first-year school children. This research promotes, through the use of mimes and role playing, the development of moral reasoning and its components such as Theory of Mind and Perspective Taking of the other. The authors wanted to develop in 5-year-old children the ability to understand the intent of the other in social interactions and moral judgment. According to the authors, if children learn taking into account the perspective of the others through role playing, they will improve their cognitive abilities involved in social interactions and will be more capable of developing Theory of Mind. This will lead them to adopt a more pro-social behavior. This research paves the way to new pedagogical perspectives by showing that developing mime, role playing, and argumentation with young children to explain conflict, impacts the “intention evaluation system”, the theory of mind and system 2 which is involved in rational and controlled reasoning.