Children'S Social Interactions and Social Concepts: Analyses of Morality and Convention in the Virgin Islands

Abstract

Observations and interviews were conducted in the Virgin Islands to examine the forms of responses adults and preschool children provided to moral and social conventional transgressions, and to determine whether children and adolescents made a conceptual distinction between morality and convention. Findings from both portions of the study paralled outcomes of previous observational and interview studies conducted with subjects in the United States. The observations in Virgin Islands preschools revealed that the responses of both adults and children to social conventional events differed from their responses to moral events. Both children's and adults' responses to moral events focused upon the intrinsic (hurtful or unjust) consequences of the actions upon victims. In contrast, the responses of both children and adults to transgressions of social conventions revolved around aspects of social order.Two forms of convention were observed: conventional school regulations and general conventions. Almost all responses to transgressions of conventional school regulations were initiated by adults. Children and adults responded with equal frequency to transgressions of general conventions. Interviews conducted with the preschool children revealed that they discriminated between the observed moral and conventional transgressions. These results were concordant with findings from interviews in the second portion of the study that older children and adolescents of the Virgin Islands treate…