The Development of Child's Conception of Justice and Friendship
Mee Hae Kim
Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to investigate developmental trends and relationships between justice and friendship. Four different interviews were administered individually to fifty 4-to 8-year old children. In the Justice domain, the interviews consisted of open-ended questions devised to investigate the children`s understanding of justice and a hypothetical story dilemma based on Damon(1977). In the friendship domain, the interviews consisted of open-ended questions based on Bigelow(1975; 1977) and Damon(1977) and a hypothetical story dillema based on Selman(1981). The developmental stage of each concept was determined through content analysis of the responses each child. Statistical analysis of obtained data was by percentage and Goodman-Kruskal`s γ. * The results showed that children`s conceptions of justice and of friendship developed in an age-related manner during early and middle childhood. While there was a significant correation between children`s conceptions of justice and friendship, this result was due to age-relatedness. The results of the present study support a domain specific approach to social cognition.
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