There is substantial research on children's evaluations of transgressors, but less is known about the extent to which children view actions toward recipients as indicative of a recipient's personality or deserved outcomes. We examined the extent to which 3- to 5 year olds, relative to an adult comparison group, judged the recipients of negative behavior as bad people who deserve punishment and recipients of positive behavior as good people who deserve praise. Participants evaluated the recipients of positive and negative acts in both a social conventional domain and a moral domain. Overall, children demonstrated an asymmetrical judgment pattern: they perceived recipients of positive behavior as good people who deserve praise and recipients of negative behavior as not bad nor deserving punishment. Adults made more conservative dispositional judgments than children. These findings suggest an asymmetry in assigning credit or blame to the recipients of others’ actions in a manner consistent with an overall positivity bias in person perception. Implications for children's reasoning about disposition and the potential intersection with moral development are discussed.

中文翻译：

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判断社会行动的接受者

关于儿童对违规者的评价有大量研究，但对于儿童将针对接受者的行为视为接受者的个性或应得的结果的程度知之甚少。我们检查了 3 至 5 岁儿童相对于成人对照组在多大程度上将消极行为的接受者判断为应该受到惩罚的坏人，而将积极行为的接受者判断为应该表扬的好人。参与者在社会常规领域和道德领域评估积极和消极行为的接受者。总的来说，孩子们表现出一种不对称的判断模式：他们认为积极行为的接受者是值得表扬的好人，而消极行为的接受者则认为既不坏也不值得惩罚。成人比儿童做出更保守的性情判断。这些发现表明，在以与个人感知中的整体积极偏见一致的方式将功劳或责备归咎于他人行为的接受者方面存在不对称性。讨论了儿童对性格推理的影响以及与道德发展的潜在交叉点。