1980/03/01 by Rachel Karniol
Psychology · #Child and Animal Learning Development #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development #Behavioral and Psychological Studies
paper · doi:10.2307/1129598
KARNIOL, RACHEL. A Conceptual Analysis of Immanent Justice Responses in Children. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1980, 51, 118-130. This paper reports an attempt to test 2 interpretations of immanent justice responses as causal attributions rather than as moral judgments. The basic process underlying such attributions was presumed to be the child's understanding of causality. From this framework, a conceptual, developmental model of causal explanations for the contiguity between the misdeed and the adversity in the immanent justice paradigm was developed. In this model, children's explanations are constrained only by their lack of knowledge of naturalistic causes for the adversities and their inability to use causal chains. 4 categories of causal explanation were thereby derived. A developmental study was then undertaken to examine changes in the causal explanations employed at different ages. Significant developmental trends were obtained only in the use of those categories which represent the ability to use causal chains. The most impressive finding in this study was that the majority of older children predominantly used causal chains to explain the contiguity between the misdeed and the adversity. 2 further studies investigated the relationship between category use and the type of adversity to be explained. Overall, the data were interpreted as consistent with an information-processing model of immanent justice responses.