The Happy Victimizer Effect
The Happy Victimizer Effect
The Happy Victimizer Effect
The happy victimizer demarks a phenomenon in which there is a discrepancy between young
childrens understanding of moral rules and their attribution of positive emotions to wrongdoers. In this paper, we argue why developmental transitions in this aspect of emotion understanding have both theoretical and applied value. First, the research literature on moral
emotion expectancies is critically reviewed and methodological constraints of the happy
victimizer experimental paradigm are discussed. Second, we elaborate on the connections
between moral emotion expectancies and childrens understanding of human agency. It is argued that the coordination process involved in making moral emotion attributions and moral
judgments is a key element in the evolving moral self. Third, the developmental signicance
of moral emotion expectancies for childrens and adolescents externalizing symptoms and
adaptive behavior is discussed.
Keywords: Moral emotion expectancy, happy victimizer phenomenon, theory of agency,
moral self, social adaptation
The purpose of this article is to oer a critical review of the research literatureboth experimental and clinicaldealing with the happy victimizer phenomenon, a frequently
overlooked, but potentially revealing, developmental transition in childrens emotion
understanding (Arsenio, Gold, & Adams, 2006). This phenomenon highlights a peculiar disjuncture in young peoples socio-moral growthone in which kindergarten and
early school-aged children, who have otherwise been shown to understand that acts of
victimization are wrong, nevertheless attribute positive, or happy, emotions to those
who intentionally bring harm upon others. Until quite recently, research in this area has
focused primarily on documenting the age-graded dierences between younger and
older childrens reasoning about harmful actions and their emotional fall-out. Numerous studies (e.g., Arsenio & Kramer, 1992; Arsenio & Lover, 1995; Nunner-Winkler &
Sodian, 1988; Yuill, Perner, Pearson, Peerbhoy, & van den Ende, 1996) exploring this developmental transition provide robust evidence that it is not typically before the ages of 6
or 7 that children begin to associate moral emotions, such as sadness, guilt, or remorse,
* Authorship is alphabetical, authors contributed equally.
222
T. Krettenauer et al.
with immoral conduct. Although various theories concerning childrens empathic abilities and attachments to others would fail to predict this nding, the happy victimizer
phenomenon is particularly puzzling when set against the impressive ndings of social
domain researchers (e.g., Smetana, 2006; Turiel, 1983, 1998). According to this research,
young children already at 3 to 4 years of age have developed an intrinsic understanding
of moral rules. That is, they consider particular behaviors to be immoral, not because of
extrinsic sanctions and authoritative commands but because of the harm suered upon
the victim. Assuming this is true, the central question that arises is, Why does the young
childs cognitive moral knowledge not lead to a corresponding emotional morality?
(Loureno, 1997, p. 426). Or, more generally, how ought we to account for the disjunction between childrens rich knowledge about the dening characteristics of moral issues, on the one hand, and their relatively impoverished understanding of the aective
consequences of these very same matters, on the other? As an answer to this question, we
will begin by considering some of the methodological concerns that have been expressed
by researchers who study the happy victimizer transition. We will then argue that the
happy victimizer nding contributes greatly to contemporary theorizing about moral
agency and our understanding of the processes that lead to the emergence of a moral
self (Lapsley & Narvaez, 2004). Further, we will elaborate on the important role moral
emotion expectancies play in the emergence and maintenance of childrens anti- and
prosocial behavior.
The Happy Victimizer Experimental Paradigm: Procedures and Limitations
The experimental conditions for testing the happy victimizer phenomenon usually engage children in a one-on-one interview procedure in which they listen to a short story
involving a prototypical moral violation (e.g., physical harm, such as pushing a peer to
the ground) between two story protagoniststhe victim and victimizer. Following these
stories, the standard emotion attribution question is typically: How does [the victimizer] feel at the end of the story? According to the earliest studies of the happy victimizer phenomenon (Barden, Zelko, Duncan & Masters, 1980; Nunner-Winkler & Sodian,
1988), when this form of question is employed, young children consistently indicate that
the victimizer is happy. As evidenced by follow-up research, however, the results of this
early work need to be approached with some caution. In particular, other areas of research have shown that young children are generally more likely to select positive emotions and deny negative ones in any kind of social cognitive task (e.g. Harter & Buddin,
1987). At the same time, young children rarely exhaust their memories if not urged to do
so (see Flavell, Miller & Miller, 2002). Researchers have speculated that togther these two
tendencies have led to an exaggerated assessment of victimizers happiness.
Arsenio and Kramer (1992) tested this hypothesis and included various levels of
probing for alternative and opposite valence emotions. Following rigorous probing,
66% of the 6- and 88% of the 8-year olds provided opposite valence emotions (e.g.,
223
sadness or remorse) for the victimizer. However most of the 4-year-olds continued
to expect that victimizers would feel happy even after being explicitly directed to the
sadness of the victim. Follow-up research with a Portuguese sample (Loureno, 1997)
has provided supporting evidence of 4-year-olds entrenched responses regarding the
victimizers happiness. For younger children, then, it would appear that the happy-victimizer nding cannot be explained by lack of probing for additional emotions.
Lack of probing, however, is not the only shortcoming of standard happy victimizer
research. As Keller and colleagues (Keller, Loureno, Malti, & Saalbach, 2003) have remarked, the typical study in this area usually asks children to indicate how somebody
else might feel in the victimizer situation (i.e., researchers request other attributions),
but not how they would feel for themselves in the same situation (i.e., self attributions).
Consequently, children may be responding to the question from a detached, third-personor, informationalviewpoint based on what they know of other peoples behavior rather than their own, rst-person experience. Because the story protagonist in the
victimizer role is engaged in an intentional action (i.e., he or she has made a choice to
act badly), it seems natural to expect him or her to feel good after the transgression. Supporting this hypothesis, Keller et al. (2003) found that even young children tended to
attribute positive emotions more often to others than to themselves. Nonetheless, more
than 50% of the 5- to 6-year-olds still responded good when attributing emotions to
self. That is, the happy victimizer response pattern does not entirely disappear even in
cases when only self-attributed emotions are requested. Such ndings rule out the explanation that the happy victimizer phenomenon is simply an artifact of the experimental
conditions under which children are asked to make emotion attributions. The question
of what causes happy victimizer attributions, however, remains open.
Motivational Explanations and the Moral Self
Because there is ample empirical evidence from the social domain approach (Smetana,
2006; Turiel, 1983, 1998) attesting to young childrens rich cognitive understanding of
moral rules, an alternative to making sense of the happy victimizer nding has been
to take a non-cognitive, or motivational, approach. First proposed by Nunner Winkler
and Sodian (1988, see also Nunner-Winkler, 1999, 2007), this approach suggests that
children rst come to know moral rules in a purely informational sense, i.e., they know
that moral norms exist and can provide reasons for them. Nevertheless, they do not
experience these norms as personally binding obligations. As a result, transgressing
them does not lead to negatively charged self-evaluative emotions, such as shame or
remorse. Nunner-Winkler and Sodians (1988) conclusions support research on the
moral self (e.g., Colby & Damon, 1992; Damon, 1984). This research suggests that
cognitive and motivational aspects of an individuals identity exist initially as two independent conceptual systems, and it is only gradually, and not until adolescence, that
they grow into a unied and integrated moral identity.
224
T. Krettenauer et al.
225
Imbedded in the notions of cognitive appraisal and emotional expectancy is the basic assumption that human beings are agentive and that emotions are part of an
arsenal of tools allowing individuals to better control their actions and engage in
deliberate, or planned, behavior. Based on such reasoning, it is conceivable that the
dierent procedures used to explore the happy victimizer transition may also prove
to be a valuable window onto what young children understand about the relation
between human emotions and the complexities of human action. A key feature of
the happy victimizer procedures is that children must situate other individuals actions in relation to their egoistic goals and the broader socio-moral context of what
is or is not prohibited. In an important sense, then, happy victimizer research deals
with individuals theories of agency. One purpose of this theoretical knowledge is
to bring order and predictability to childrens own and others emotional lives. As
this theory is integrated into childrens self-reective knowledge (i.e., as it becomes
more accessible, rehearsed, and explicit) it becomes the developmental engine for an
emerging moral self. Although little empirical work has been conducted to investigate the plausibility of such an account, the work of Paul Harris (1989) and Jean
Piaget (1954/1981) provide important insight as to how childrens understanding of
moral emotions works in relation to their conceptions of human agency.
Harris: Internalizing an External Audience
Harris (1989) has argued that the turning point in young childrens reasoning about
emotional matters, and particularly acts of victimization, comes with the addition of a
new recursive layer in their views about others agency, or, as he put it, a shift from seeing people as simply agents to seeing them as observers of their own agency (p. 92).
Central to this account is the idea that children eventually come to internalize an external audience. This process of internalizing an audience ultimately allows children to
evaluate their own and others actions from a more distant, third-person point of view.
Harris claims have garnered some support in the research of Murgatroyd and Robinson (1997), who used an altered victimizer story lineone where respondents heard
that an additional, third story character, the onlooker, was observing the victimizers
actions, and then reacted with either approval or disapproval. Murgatroyd and Robinson
(1997) provide evidence suggesting that emotional judgments are determined by how
others (i.e., the audience in Harris account) are imagined to think about a wrongdoing. Although these ndings shed some light on the factors that may inuence childrens
moral emotion attributions, questions remain as to how they t within a broader developmental account of childrens moral growth. What is the relationship between the
development of moral autonomy and agency in Harris account? When does a strategy
of emotional matching evolve into a principled way of thinking about moral or immoral actions? Beyond these questions, however, Harris work is instructive insofar as
226
T. Krettenauer et al.
it highlights how young children are sensitive to normative standards and recognize the
formative role of others in determining them. Piagets account goes further in showing
how such sensitivity to norms relates to the development of childrens emotional lives.
Piaget: Emotions and Agency
Although not a well-known piece of his broader legacy, Piaget elaborates on the relation between childrens emotional lives and the development of agency in his collection of lectures (1953-54) published as Intelligence and Aectivity (1981). There,
demonstrating the signicance of emotions in childrens development, Piaget describes agencyor what he called the willas the aective analogue of intellectual
decentration (Piaget, 1954/1981, p. 64). For Piaget, agency relates to matters of moral
duty and obligation, or what he called normative aects (Piaget, 1954/1981, p. 59).
The structure of the will or agency, perhaps counter to most intuitions, has more in
common with logical necessity than with personal freedom. This is because the will is
inherently rational, emerging only from a coordinated system of social and personal
values. These values, in turn, are construed as a veritable logic of feelings that, as
Piaget (1954/1981, p. 13; see also p. 60) remarks, ultimately come to share the same
conservations and invariants (p. 60) that arise in childrens intellectual growth.
Piaget does not assume that children come into the world automatically equipped with
a ready-made scale of values (Piaget, 1981, p. 9). Rather, on his account, values arrive
as a bundle of largely arbitrary desires, or spontaneous impulses (i.e., non-normative
feelings), that work to eectively drive the will. Initially, then, a childs will is not properly
said to be his or her own, but is instead determined by considerations that are external to
it. Insofar as this is the case, the childs conduct is sometimes said to be heteronomous
(Piaget, 1981, p. 65; see also Piaget, 1932/1965; compare Frankfurt, 1999, pp. 131-132).
An autonomous will, by contrast, begins to emerge under very dierent circumstances and requires that a subject act against the dominant impulse when in conict with a
weaker one, by subordinating [it] to a permanent scale of values (Piaget, 1954/1981,
p. 65). To help make this subordination process clear, Piaget (1954/1981) draws on
the notion of decentration, suggesting that acts of will are essentially the intellectual
equivalent to a change of perspective (p. 64). Similar to the perceptual manipulations
occurring in Piagets classic conservation problems, the subject masters the immediate
aective conguration of a situation by connecting it with former situations and, if
need be, by anticipating future ones (p. 63). This is where Piagets account begins to
converge with more contemporary notions of how emotional expectancies, like those
explored in the happy victimizer paradigm, inuence human behavior.
Agency and Constraint in Happy Victimizer Research
In a program of research initiated by Sokol and his colleagues (Sokol, 2004; Sokol &
Chandler, 2003), it has been argued that the standard happy victimizer vignette en-
227
gages participants in the same sort of aective decentration process that Piaget has
described. Specically, the victimizer in the standard story condition faces a conict
between two impulsesin the case of Sokols stimulus materials, either to wait his
turn to play (the moral choice) or to behave badly by pushing the other story character aside (the stronger, egoistic impulse). Participants in Sokol et al.s research who
could successfully coordinate the victimizers actions and goals typically attributed
to the victimizer a mixture of emotions: happy for achieving his goals, and sad for
harming the other child in the story. Importantly, two key details entered into childrens mixed responses: 1) understanding how individuals agency is rooted in an
autonomous locus of control; and, 2) recognizing that human agency, however open
to personal considerations, is nevertheless subject to interpersonal or social constraints (i.e., normative values). In other words, childrens understanding of agency
and constraint guided their emotion attributions. In support of this argument, Sokol
et al. have also shown that childrens performance on the happy victimizer procedures is strongly associated with other parallel measures of social understanding, or
an interpretive theory of mind (Chandler & Sokol, 1999; Sokol & Chandler, 2003),
that similarly tap childrens conceptions of agency.
Although further research using Sokol et al.s procedures is needed, the tentative
implications of this work are threefold. The rst is that, while the happy victimizer
experimental procedures are often characterized as eliciting childrens best thoughts
about moral emotions, it may be more accurate to describe them as a measurement
strategy for exploring childrens notions of agency or the will. Second, and taking the
form of a hypothesis needing further investigation, if the standard happy victimizer
stimulus materials (i.e., the story conditions) are ostensibly about matters of the will,
then it follows that childrens developing conceptions of agency should intersect in
systematic ways with the emotion attributions they make. Sokols (2004) ndings in
support of this hypothesis suggest a promising lead toward making better sense of
the happy victimizer transition. Third, and nally, given this research programs emphasis on the development of agency, it suggests one avenue for exploring some of
the developmental building blocks associated with the moral self in early to middle childhood. Specically, it illustrates the merit of construing childrens socio-moral
growth as a process of coordinating ones actions in relations to others, or what might
more generally be called a theory of agency. Focusing on the coordination processes involved in childrens reasoning about moral emotions and their own and others
agency also makes it possible to explore the happy victimizer phenomenon at later
time-points in development, such as adolescence and young adulthood.
Adolescents Moral Reasoning and the Happy Victimizer Paradigm
Previous research on moral emotion expectancies has mainly focused on early-tomiddle childhood, and little attention has been devoted to developmental changes
in adolescence. Where adolescence has been a focus, these few studies were prima-
228
T. Krettenauer et al.
229
Research on the relationship between childrens emotion attributions and externalizing, aggressive problem behaviors reveals an increasingly consistent picture (see Arsenio et al., 2006, for a recent review). Studies with kindergarteners and preschoolers provide evidence that positive (i.e. immoral) emotion expectancies, or related
hedonistic justications, are associated with behavioral problems, although these
relationships depend partially on the measure and the exact interview questions
used. For example, Asendorpf and Nunner-Winkler (1992) reported that moral
emotion expectancies were negatively related to cheating behavior for ve- to sevenyear-old children. By contrast, Ramos-Marcuse and Arsenio (2001) studied four- to
ve-year-old preschool childrens emotion attributions and externalizing behavior
problems and found no direct relation. Dunn and Hughes (2001) found that hardto-manage 4-year-olds, who frequently engaged in violent pretend play, two years
later displayed more hedonistic emotion justications than a control group. Similarly, Hughes and Dunn (2000) reported that 6-year-old children with behavior problems focused more frequently on the hedonistic aspects of their emotion expectancies than children without such problems. Likewise, in a study by Arsenio and Fleiss
(1996), clinically diagnosed, behaviorally disruptive 6- to 12-year-old children were
more likely to minimize the negative emotions experienced by victimizers than the
children in the control group. These ndings, however, stand in contrast to research
by Malti (2003), who found no dierences in a 6- to 11-year-old sample of aggressive
and non-aggressive childrens emotion attributions to victimizers.
As a way to shed further clarication on this inconsistency, researchers have begun
to dierentiate between emotions attributed to the hypothetical victimizer and those
attributed to the self (see section on Procedures and Limitations above). In these studies, self-attributed moral emotions are more strongly associated with externalizing,
aggressive behavior. For example, Malti (2007) found that self-attributed moral emotionsbut not other-attributed onesnegatively predicted aggression in kindergarten children. Furthermore, Malti and Keller (in press) reported that 6- to 10-year-old
boys with high self-attributed moral emotions displayed less externalizing behavior
than boys with lower levels of self-attributed moral emotions.
Studies on bullying and juvenile delinquency provide additional support for the value of separating self- and other- attributions. In particular, Gasser and Keller (2007) reported that justications for self-attributed emotions were especially relevant in regard
to seven- to eight-year-old elementary school children involved in bullying behavior.
Menesini and colleagues (2003) found that 9- to 13-year-old bullies displayed a higher
230
T. Krettenauer et al.
level of disengagement emotions (i.e., indierence and pride) when asked about the
self in the role of the victimizer. Finally, Krettenauer and Eichler (2006) showed that
the intensity of self-attributed negative (moral) emotions negatively predicted adolescents delinquency. A similar nding was reported by Arsenio, Gold, and Adams
(2004), showing that behaviorally disruptive adolescents rated themselves as feeling
happier following acts of provoked aggression and unprovoked acts of victimization.
In sum, these studies provide substantial evidence that individual dierences in
moral emotion attributions to the self are closely related to behavioral problems across
dierent age groups. As these studies are restricted to cross-sectional designs, however,
further longitudinal research is needed to investigate the developmental relationships
between these aspects of social growth.
Moral Emotion Expectancies and Pro-Social Behavior
When looking at relations between moral emotion expectancies and social behavior, it is important to consider not only anti- but also prosocial behavior. Although
there is a well-established literature on the role of empathy in prosocial behavior (see
Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Sadovsky, 2006), very little is known about moral emotion expectancies as predictors of prosocial behavior. One of the few studies in this area that
has attempted a direct investigation was conducted by Gummerum and colleagues
(Gummerum, Keller, Rust, & Hanoch, 2007). In this study, three- to ve-year-old
childrens emotion attributions to hypothetical victimizers predicted their prosocial
behavior in a sharing situation developed in economic game theory (see Gummerum
and Keller, this issue). Another study by Malti, Gummerum, and Buchmann (2007)
found that a combined measure of self-attributed moral emotions and justications
predicted mother-rated prosocial behavior in six-year-old children. Although these
studies used dierent measures to assess prosocial action and the ndings are only
partially consistent, they nevertheless provide rst empirical evidence of the role of
moral emotion expectancies in childrens prosocial behavior.
Conclusions
The purpose of our article was threefold: First, we elaborated on methodological limitations of previous happy victimizer research. Second, we detailed how research about
moral emotion expectancies contributes to a more general account of moral agency
and how the coordination processes involved in moral emotion expectancies and moral
judgment underlie the emergence of moral selfhood. Third, we analyzed the role of moral emotion expectancies in the genesis of (mal)adaptive behaviors. Below, we summarize
the rationale for these three discussion points and identify areas of future research.
From a methodological point of view, lack of probing is one of the main shortcomings of previous happy victimizer research. More recent research indicates that sys-
231
tematic probing for alternative emotions may lead to a higher incidence of negative
emotion attributions, particularly in middle childhood. A second methodological
concern is that children more frequently mention negative emotions when asked
to attribute emotions to themselves in the role of the victimizer (self attributions)
than when asked to attribute emotions to a hypothetical wrongdoer (other attributions). These ndings indicate that methodological factors may inuence emotion
attributions in important ways. Further research is needed to investigate what factors in the happy victimizer research paradigm pull for negative or positive emotion attributions. Similarly, future research should use a more dierentiated array of
hypothetical situations that may inuence emotion attributions (cf. Arsenio et al.,
2004; Smetana, Campione-Barr, & Yell, 2003), and compare emotion attributions in
hypothetical and real-life transgressions (Wainryb, Brehl, & Matwin, 2005).
Regarding the role of moral emotion expectancies in the development of a moral
self, we criticized an exclusively motivational explanation of the happy victimizer attribution pattern. As moral emotion expectancies require cognitive skills, a rigid distinction between cognitive and motivational factors cannot be sustained. We argued
that emotion attributions in the happy victimizer procedure indicate how children
understand human agency and gradually learn to coordinate ones actions in relations
to others. The decline of happy victimizer attributions indicates that moral knowledge
and moral emotions are becoming increasingly coordinated in the course of development. We discussed empirical evidence demonstrating that this coordination process
is not limited to childhood, but continues into adolescence.
The present paper suggests that moral emotion expectancies are intimately linked
to the development of the moral self. Because no empirical research has yet analyzed
this relationship directly, the ideas presented here remain largely theoretical. To be
sure, establishing an empirical link will not be straightforward task given that there
is currently no standard measure for exploring developmental changes in the moral
self (Hardy & Carlo, 2005). So far most of the research on the moral self has been
restricted to examining the relation between moral identity and community service
(see Hart, 2005; Nucci, 2004). An investigation into the relationship between moral
self and moral emotion expectancies would greatly improve our understanding of the
psychological processes that are associated with the development of a moral self in
day-to-day life.
Regarding the relations between moral emotion expectancies and behavioral adaptation, we discussed implications of emotion attributions for childrens and adolescents antisocial and prosocial behavior. Behavioral adaptation and symptoms
of maladaptation are related to the developmental level of social and moral understanding as well as emotions (Noam, 1992). Because emotion attributions as assessed
in the happy victimizer procedure reect childrens understanding of the relation
between moral emotions and actions, they open a promising avenue for studying
behavior regulation. In line with this argumentation, previous research documented
that self-attributed moral emotions and aggression are negatively associated, both
232
T. Krettenauer et al.
233
Blasi, A. (1999a). Caring about morality: The development of moral motivation in NunnerWinklers work. In F. E. Weinert & W. Schneider (Eds.), Individual development from three
to twelve. Findings from the Munich longitudinal study (pp. 291-300). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Blasi, A. (1999b). Emotions and moral motivation. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior,
29, 1-19.
Chandler, M. J., & Sokol, B. W. (1999). Representation once removed: Childrens developing
conceptions of representational life. In I. Sigel (Ed.), Development of mental representation: Theories and applications (pp. 201-230). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Colby, A., & Damon, W. (1992). Some do care: Contemporary lives of moral commitment.
New York: Free Press.
Crick, N.C., & Dodge, K.A. (1994). A review and reformulation of social information processing mechanisms in childrens social adjustment. Psychological Bulletin, 115, 74-101.
Damon, W. (1984). Self-understanding and moral development from childhood to adolescence. In W. M. Kurtines & J. L. Gewirtz (Eds.), Morality, moral behavior, and moral development (pp. 109-127). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Dunn, J., & Hughes, C. (2001). I got some swords and youre dead!: violent fantasy, antisocial behavior, friendship, and moral sensibility in young children. Child Development,
72(2). 491-505.
Eisenberg, N., Spinrad, T.L., & Sadovsky, A. (2006). Empathy-related responding in children.
In M. Killen & J. Smetana (Eds.), Handbook of moral development (pp. 517-549). Mahwah:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Flavell, J. H., Miller, P. H., & Miller, S. A. (2002). Cognitive Development, 4th Ed. Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Frankfurt, H. G. (1999). Necessity, volition, and love. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gasser, L., & Keller, M. (2007). Are the competent the morally good? Social-cognitive competencies
and moral motivation of children involved in bullying. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Gummerum, M., Keller, M., Rust, K., & Hanoch, Y. (2007). Moral judgment, emotion attribution, and prosocial behavior in preschool children. A study with the happy victimizer task.
Manuscript in preparation.
Harris, P. L. (1989). Children and emotion. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hardy, S., & Carlo, G. (2005). Identity as a source of moral motivation. Human Development,
48, 232-256.
Hart, D. (2005). The development of moral identity. In G. Carlo & C. P. Edwards (Eds.), Moral
motivation trough the life span (pp. 165-196). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Harter, S., & Buddin, B. J. (1987). Childrens understanding of the simultaneity of two emotions:
A ve-stage developmental acquisition sequence. Developmental Psychology, 23, 388-399.
Hughes, C. & Dunn, J. (2000). Hedonism or empathy? Hard-to-manage childrens moral
awareness and links with cognitive and maternal characteristics. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 18, 227-245.
Keller, M., Loureno, O., Malti, T., & Saalbach, H. (2003). The multifaceted phenomenon
of happy victimizers: A cross-cultural comparison of moral emotions. British Journal of
Developmental Psychology, 21, 1-18.
Krettenauer, T. (2007, November). It cant be right what feels wrong The coordination of
moral emotion expectancies and moral judgment in adolescence. Paper presented at the
Annual Meeting of the Association for Moral Education. New York.
234
T. Krettenauer et al.
Krettenauer, T. (2004). Metaethical cognition and epistemic reasoning development in adolescence. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 28, 461-470.
Krettenauer, T., & Edelstein, W. (1999). From substages to moral types and beyond: An analysis of core criteria for morally autonomous judgments. International Journal of Behavioral
Development, 23, 899-920.
Krettenauer, T., & Eichler, D. (2006). Adolescents self-attributed moral emotions following
a moral transgression: relations with delinquence, condence in moral judgment, and age.
British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 24 (3), 489-506.
Lapsley, D.K., & D. Narvaez, D. (2004). (Eds.). Moral development, self, and identity. Mahwah:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Lemerise, E. & Arsenio, W. (2000). An integrated model of emotion processes and cognition
in social information processing. Child Development, 71, 107-118.
Loureno, O. (1997). Childrens attributions of moral emotions to victimizers: Some data,
doubts, and suggestions. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 15, 425-438.
Malti, T. (2003). Das Gefhlsverstndnis aggressiver Kinder [Aggressive childrens understanding of emotions]. Doctoral dissertation, Free University Berlin. [on-line] Available:
www.diss.fu-berlin.de/2003/120/index.html.
Malti, T. (2007). Moral emotions and aggressive behavior in childhood. In G. Stegen & M.
Gollwitzer (Eds.), Emotions and aggressive behavior (pp. 185-200). Gttingen: Hogrefe.
Malti, T., Gummerum, M., & Buchmann, M. (2007). Contemporaneous and one-year longitudinal prediction of childrens prosocial behaviour from sympathy and moral motivation.
Journal of Genetic Psychology, 168(3), 277-299.
Malti, T., & Keller, M. (in press). The relation of elementary school childrens externalizing
behaviour to emotion attributions, evaluation of consequences, and moral reasoning. European Journal of Developmental Psychology.
Menesini, E., V. Sanchez, A. Fonzi, R. Ortega, A. Costabile and G. Lo Feudo. 2003. Moral
emotions and bullying: A cross-national comparison of dierences between bullies, victims
and outsiders. Aggressive Behavior, 29, 515-530.
Murgatroyd, S. J., & Robinson, E. J. (1997). Childrens and adults attributions of emotion to a
wrongdoer: The inuence of the onlookers reaction. Cognition and Emotion, 11, 83-101.
Noam, G. G. (1992). Development as the aim of clinical intervention. Development and Psychopathology, 4, 679-696.
Nucci, L. (2004). The promise and limitations of the moral self construct. In C. Lightfoot, C.
Lalonde, & M. Chandler (Eds.), Changing conceptions of psychological life (pp. 49-70).
Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Nunner-Winkler, G. (1999). Development of moral understanding and moral motivation. In
F. E. Weinert & W. Schneider (Eds.), Individual development from 3 to 12 (pp. 253-292).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nunner-Winkler, G. (2007). Development of moral motivation from childhood to early adulthood. Journal of Moral Education, 36, 399-414.
Nunner-Winkler, G., & Sodian, B. (1988). Childrens understanding of moral emotions. Child
Development, 59, 1323-38.
Orobio de Castro, B., Merk, W., Koops, W., Veerman, J.W., & Bosch, J.D. (2005). Emotions
in social information processing and their relations with reactive and proactive aggression in referred aggressive boys. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology,
34, 105-116
235
Piaget, J. (1965). The moral judgment of the child. (M. Gabain, Trans.). New York: The Free
Press. (Original work published 1932)
Piaget, J. (1981). Intelligence and aectivity: Their relationship during child development. (T.
Brown & C. Kaegi, Trans. and Eds.). Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews Monograph. (Original
work published 1954)
Ramos-Marcuse, F., & Arsenio, W. (2001). Young childrens emotionally-charged moral narratives: Relations with attachment and behavior problems and competencies. Early Education and Development, 12, 165-184.
Smetana, J. G. (2006). Social-cognitive domain theory: Consistencies and variations in childrens moral and social judgments. In M. Killen & J. G. Smetana (Eds.), Handbook of moral
development (pp. 119-153). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Smetana, J.G., Campione-Barr, N., & Yell, N. (2003). Childrens moral and aective judgments
regarding provocation and retaliation. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 49 (2), 209-236.
Sokol, B. W. (2004). Childrens conceptions of agency and morality: Making sense of the
happy victimizer phenomenon. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of British
Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Sokol, B. W. & Chandler, M. J. (2003). Taking agency seriously in the theories-of-mind enterprise:
Exploring childrens understanding of interpretation and intention. British Journal of Educational Psychology Monograph Series II (Number 2 - Development and Motivation), 125-136.
Turiel, E. (1983). The development of social knowledge: Morality and convention. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Turiel, E. (1998). The development of morality. In W. Damon (Series Ed.) & N. Eisenberg (Vol.
Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Social, emotional, and personality development (pp. 863932). New York: Wiley.
Wainryb, C., Brehl, B., & Matwin, S. (2005). Being hurt and hurting others: childrens narrative accounts and moral judgements of their own interpersonal conicts. Monographs of
the Society for Reseach in Child Development, 70(3), Serial No. 281. Boston: Blackwell.
Yuill, N., Perner, J., Pearson, A., Peerbhoy, D., & van den Ende, J. (1996). Childrens changing
understanding of wicked desires: From objective to subjective and moral. British Journal of
Developmental Psychology, 14, 457-475.
Address for correspondence: Dr. Tobias Krettenauer, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo,
Ontario, N2L 3C5, E-mail: tkrettenauer@wlu.ca
Tobias Krettenauer is an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology of Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada. His research focuses on the interplay of cognitive, emotional and personality development as it is related to matters of moral conduct and moral consciousness.
Tina Malti, Ph.D., is a Visiting Research Scientist at Harvard University, USA. Her research interests
include the development of childrens social and moral competencies, developmentally dierentiated prevention, longitudinal and intervention studies, and clinical-developmental psychology.
Bryan W. Sokol, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at St. Louis University, USA. His research interests include the development of childrens social understanding
and socio-emotional competence, empathy and moral agency, and conceptions of selfhood.