Marlis Buchmann

Children's Moral Motivation, Sympathy, and Prosocial Behavior

Two studies investigated the role of childrens moral motivation and sympathy in prosocial behavior. Study 1 measured other-reported prosocial behavior and self- and other-reported sympathy. Moral motivation was assessed by emotion attributions and moral reasoning following hypothetical transgressions in a representative longitudinal sample of Swiss 6-year-old children (N = 1,273). Prosocial behavior increased with increasing sympathy, especially if children displayed low moral motivation. Moral motivation and sympathy were also independently related to prosocial behavior. Study 2 extended the findings of Study 1 with a second longitudinal sample of Swiss 6-year-old children (N = 175) using supplementary measures of prosocial behavior, sympathy, and moral motivation. The results are discussed in regard to the precursors of the moral self in childhood.

Institutional Variation and the Position of Young People: A Comparative Perspective

The articles in this issue report on a variety of young peoples behaviors and attitudes, drawn from a wide range of countries. An obvious challenge to which these findings give rise is to explain the differences between countries in these attitudes and behaviors. In this article, we look to institutional variation to supply an answer. Institutions establish a set of opportunities and constraints to which young people respond, but they also reflect, and help to establish, normatively appropriate ways of behaving. We conceptualize institutional variation in terms of welfare regime types, labor market regulation, and educational systems, and we try to sketch some of the ways in which variations in these might explain some national differences in some aspects of the position of young people and the transition from youth to adulthood.

Aggressive and prosocial children's emotion attributions and moral reasoning.

Aggressive and prosocial childrens emotion attributions and moral reasoning were investigated. Participants were 235 kindergarten children (M=6.2 years) and 136 elementary-school children (M=7.6 years) who were selected as aggressive or prosocial based on (kindergarten) teacher ratings. The children were asked to evaluate hypothetical rule violations, attribute emotions they would feel in the role of the victimizer, and justify their responses. Compared with younger prosocial children, younger aggressive children attributed fewer negative emotions and were more likely to provide sanction-oriented justifications when evaluating rule violations negatively. Furthermore, age-, gender- and context-effects in moral development occurred. The context-effects included both effects of transgression type (i.e., prosocial morality vs. fairness) on emotion attributions and moral reasoning and the effects of the context of moral evaluation and emotion attribution on moral reasoning. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of emotion attributions and moral reasoning as antecedents of childrens aggressive and prosocial behavior.

Organizational and Institutional Factors in the Process of Gender Stratification: Comparing Social Arrangements in Six European Countries

Industrial nations vary widely with regard to the extensiveness and the nature of womens occupational activities.1 In Western Europe alone, rates of female labor force participation for 1988 ranged from about 38 percent of the working-age population in Ireland to over 84 percent in Sweden (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 1990a, Country Tables II). Recent research also provides evidence of some great international differences in womens labor market distribu tions (Charles 1992). Levels and patterns of occupational sex segrega tion range widely, even among Western European countries with quite similar economic and social structures.

Early Sympathy and Social Acceptance Predict the Development of Sharing in Children

Sharing is a fascinating activity of the human species and an important basis for the development of fairness, care, and cooperation in human social interaction. Economic research has proposed that sharing, or the willingness to sacrifice own resources for others, has its roots in social emotions such as sympathy. However, only few cross-sectional experiments have investigated children’s other-regarding preferences, and the question how social-emotional skills influence the willingness to share valuable resources has not been tested. In the present longitudinal-experimental study, a sample of 175 6-year-old children, their primary caregivers, and their teachers is examined over a 3-year period of time. Data are analyzed by means of growth curve modeling. The findings show that sharing valuable resources strongly increases in children from 6 to 9 years of age. Increases in sharing behavior are associated with the early-developing ability to sympathize with anonymous others. Sharing at 7 years of age is predicted by feelings of social acceptance at 6 years of age. These findings hold after controlling for children’s IQ and SES. Girls share more equally than boys at 6 and 7 years of age, however, this gender difference disappears at the age of 9 years. These results indicate that human sharing strongly increases in middle childhood and, that this increase is associated with sympathy towards anonymous others and with feelings of social acceptance. Additionally, sharing develops earlier in girls than in boys. This developmental perspective contributes to new evidence on change in sharing and its social-emotional roots. A better understanding of the factors underlying differences in the development of sharing and pro-social orientations should also provide insights into the development of atypical, anti-social orientations which exhibit social-emotional differences such as aggression and bullying behavior.

Labour market structures and women’s employment levels

With the rise in women’s part-time work in many Western industrialised countries, a better understanding of women’s employment decisions necessitates the distinction between different employment levels and varying structural opportunities that facilitate or hinder female employment. This article analyses for Switzerland how structural factors affect women’s decisions to work marginal part-time, substantial par t-time, full-time or to stay out of the labour force. The analyses are based on the Swiss Labour Force Survey. The logistic regression findings show that labour market and firm-related opportunity structures affect the three types of employment levels differently. They also play a much larger role in the probability of working marginal part-time than in that of working substantial part-time or full-time.

The transition from the utilitarian to the expressive self: 1900–1992☆

Abstract A distinctive feature of modern Western society is the great social and cultural importance attributed to the individual. The cultural emphasis on the person not only extends to the individuals rights (and obligations) vis-a-vis other social entities and society at large, but it also includes conceptions of the nature, the essential qualities and properties of the human being. This latter aspect is especially prominent in the extent to which modern culture is concerned with the conception of the self. This cultural preoccupation with the inner self raises several important questions regarding the dynamics of the cultural imagery of the self. Of greatest interest is the question of how personal qualities and competencies that constitute the appropriate self change in the course of modern societys long-term development. Likewise, the question of how these changes are related to other social processes, especially to economic, political, and cultural developments of modern society, calls for attention. The relevant theoretical literature suggests that major shifts in the cultural definition of the self have occurred in a similar way throughout Western society over the historical period of the twentieth century. However, there have been very few systematic empirical investigations charting the long-term historical evolution of the cultural conception of the self and relating this evolution to social processes characteristic of modern society. In this paper, we take a first step in this direction by investigating images of the self in Switzerland since the beginning of the 20th century. Our analyses are based on representative samples of personal ads (i.e., advertisements for a [marriage] partner) in two Swiss daily newspapers, covering the time period from 1900 to 1992.

Geschlechtstypische Berufswahl: Begabungszuschreibungen, Aspirationen und Institutionen

Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, ob geschlechterstereotype Begabungszuschreibungen von Eltern am Ende der Pflichtschulzeit einen Einfluss darauf haben, dass junge Frauen und Manner drei Jahre spater, mit 18 Jahren, eine geschlechtstypische Berufsausbildung absolvieren. Die Daten stammen von der mittleren Kohorte der Schweizer Kinder- und Jugendlangsschnittstudie COCON und wurden 2006 und 2009 erhoben, als die Jugendlichen 15 bzw. 18 Jahre alt waren. Die Ergebnisse multinominaler Logit-Modelle zeigen, dass geschlechterstereotype elterliche Fahigkeitszuschreibungen die Wahl unterschiedlicher Typen von Frauen- und Mannerberufen begunstigen. Zudem kommt geschlechtstypischen Aspirationen sowie institutionellen Zuweisungsprozessen aufgrund schulischer Qualifikationen eine grose Bedeutung zu.

Labour Market Entry and beyond: Some Reflections on the Changing Structure of Work.

This article raises the question of how recent labour market developments affect the transition from school to work (i.e. labour market entry) and the successive employment career. The focus of interest are countries characterised by well‐established and wide‐spread vocational training systems, constituting strong institutionalised links between the educational and the employment systems (i.e. Austria, Germany and Switzerland). The arguments advanced show that the changing structure of work (i.e. the shifting nature of work, the decrease in the temporal validity of skills and the changing cultural significance of work) is likely to modify the well‐established interplay between the supply and demand sides in the labour markets of these countries, thus exerting considerable pressure on the stability and orderliness of employment trajectories. Against this background, the most critical issues of vocational training systems are described and reforms of these systems are discussed.

Developmental relations between sympathy, moral emotion attributions, moral reasoning, and social justice values from childhood to early adolescence

This study examined the development of sympathy, moral emotion attributions (MEA), moral reasoning, and social justice values in a representative sample of Swiss children (N = 1273) at 6 years of age (Time 1), 9 years of age (Time 2), and 12 years of age (Time 3). Cross-lagged panel analyses revealed that sympathy predicted subsequent increases in MEA and moral reasoning, but not vice versa. In addition, sympathy and moral reasoning at 6 and 9 years of age were associated with social justice values at 12 years of age. The results point to increased integration of affect and cognition in childrens morality from middle childhood to early adolescence, as well as to the role of moral development in the emergence of social justice values.