対人葛藤場面における児童の謝罪と罪悪感の関連

Abstract

This study examines whether apologies by children are sincere or perfunctory. Twentyfour children (7-8 years old) participated. An individual interview was conducted with each during 6 drawings about frustration situations. The situations included three types of harmdoer's intentions (intentional, accidental, or ambiguous) and two types of damage (physical or mental). The experimenter told some stories and asked each child what he or she thought the harm-doer would say to the victim and whether the harm-doer would feel sorry for them. The results showed that children voluntarily apologized more frequently in two physical damage situations (intentional and accidental) and less frequently in mental damage situations (intentional). Also, voluntary apology responses were accompanied by guilt more frequently than no-apology responses. We concluded that most children's apologies related to guilt feelings, but that they depended on the situation a child faced. This result suggested that children used both a sincere apology and a perfunctory apology as the situation demanded. Implications for further research on conflict resolutions were discussed.