Moral judgments and emotions: adolescents' evaluations in intergroup social exclusion contexts.

Abstract

This article examines children's moral judgments and emotional evaluations in the context of social exclusion. As they age, children and adolescents face increasingly complex situations in which group membership and allegiance are in opposition with morally relevant decisions, such as the exclusion of an individual from a group. While adolescents are often characterized as being conformists to group norms, research demonstrates that their judgments about fairness, justice, and rights can supersede negative or exclusive norms espoused by groups. Additionally, young people's emotional evaluations of members who do not conform to a group norm are in concert with these fairness judgments. Implications for social and moral development will be discussed in the context of empirical findings.