Prosocial Television, Preschool Children’s Moral Judgments, and Moral Reasoning: The Role of Social Moral Intuitions and Perspective-Taking

Abstract

Children’s prosocial television shows include moral lessons in their narratives, but research suggests that children struggle to comprehend and transfer these lessons to other situations. The social intuitionist model of moral judgment, however, argues that dimensions of morality can be made more salient through environmental exposure. Using data collected from 101 parent-child dyads (children ages 4.5-6.5), we explore if children’s existing moral intuitions about fairness and care may be made salient following exposure to moral lessons in a children’s television show, and if parent presence and mediation aid this process. Results demonstrate that, compared with children in the control group, children who viewed the moral message either alone or with a parent experienced improvements in perspective-taking, which in turn influenced their moral judgments and moral reasoning. Thus, children’s morality can be positively influenced by prosocial television exposure via promoting perspective-taking, fairness, and care.