Understanding the role of testimony in children’s moral development: Theories, controversies, and implications

Children, much like adults, rely heavily on information from other people in the domains of word learning, science and religion (Harris, Koenig, Corriveau & Jaswal, 2018). However, we know much less about how testimony affects children’s moral thinking. In fact, many psychologists argue that morality is relatively impervious to direct testimonial influence, and emphasize children’s early emerging moral abilities and intuitions (Haidt, 2001; Hamlin, 2013; Smetana, 1981). These accounts are consistent with recent philosophical work holding that while testimony is an acceptable source for non-moral beliefs, it is problematic to acquire moral understanding via testimony (the asymmetry thesis, Hopkins, 2007). Is testimony really insufficient to transmit moral understanding?

In order to address this question, we first draw attention to recent philosophical work on skepticism towards moral testimony. We then review the literature on children’s moral development and testimonial learning and make the argument that testimony plays an indispensable role in children’s acquisition of moral understanding. Lastly, we discuss how the study of moral testimony could be supported by appreciating a set of important distinctions (e.g., different levels of dependence, different types of testimony, different costs and benefits) to aid our theorizing and empirical work on testimonial learning in the moral domain.