Children’s Moral Emotions and Negative Emotionality: Predictors of Early-onset Antisocial Behaviour

• Main Author: Colasante, Tyler
• Other Authors: Malti, Tina
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: antisocial behaviour; guilt; sympathy; negative emotionality; experience-based sampling; 0620; 0622
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/42753

This study examined links between antisocial behaviour, moral emotions (i.e., sympathy and guilt), and negative emotionality in an ethnically diverse sample of 4- and 8-year-old children (N = 79). Primary caregivers reported their children’s antisocial behaviour, sympathy, and negative emotionality through a questionnaire and across a 10-day span via daily diary entries (n = 474 records). In a semi-structured interview, children reported their sympathy levels and guilt feelings. Children with high guilt in harm contexts and low negative emotionality were rated as less antisocial in both questionnaire and diary reports. For children with low guilt in exclusion contexts, low sympathy ratings predicted higher questionnaire-reported antisocial behaviour. For children with high guilt in prosocial omission contexts, high sympathy ratings predicted lower diary-reported antisocial behaviour. Lastly, high sympathy ratings predicted lower questionnaire-reported antisocial behaviour for children with low negative emotionality.