AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR Volume 35, pages 90–102 (2009) Aggressive and Prosocial Children’s Emotion Attributions and Moral Reasoning Tina Malti 1Ã , Luciano Gasser 2 , and Marlis Buchmann 1 1 Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland 2 Institute for Special Education, Teacher Training University of Central Switzerland, Lucerne, Switzerland : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : Aggressive and prosocial children’s emotion attributions and moral reasoning were investigated. Participants were 235 kindergarten children (M 5 6.2 years) and 136 elementary-school children (M 5 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 children’s aggressive and prosocial behavior. Aggr. Behav. 35:90–102, 2009. r 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc. : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : Keywords: aggressive behavior; prosocial behavior; emotion attributions; moral reasoning; children INTRODUCTION What types of emotions do aggressive and prosocial children attribute to hypothetical victimi- zers after moral rule violations? How do they justify their evaluations of moral rules and their emotion attributions? These issues are controversial. Whereas structural–developmental theory empha- sizes the importance of moral reasoning for (im)moral behavior [Kohlberg, 1976; Piaget, 1965], other scholars have pointed to the need to investi- gate the neglected role of emotion attributions and moral emotions in the genesis of inter-individual behavioral differences [Arsenio et al., 2006; Arsenio and Lemerise, 2004; Hoffman, 2000; Krettenauer et al., 2008]. The question of how emotion attribu- tions and moral reasoning impact children’s social behavior is of great significance for developmental and clinical psychologists, because it may help us gain further insight into the moral deficiencies as well as the strengths of aggressive and prosocial children. Such an enhanced understanding is important if future educational interventions aimed at fostering moral resilience and social competence in children are to be effective [Nucci and Narvaez, 2008]. Despite this attractive prospect, very little research has been undertaken so far on the influence of emotion attributions and moral reasoning on the moral quality of children’s social behavior. Further, much previous research in this area has unidimen- sionally focused on aggression. However, prosocial behavior is not simply the absence of aggressive behavior; rather, it has a genuine moral quality, as it includes the consideration of another person’s welfare [Gibbs, 2003]. Identifying the particular moral deficiencies of aggressive children and com- paring these to the moral resiliencies of prosocial children may thus be of tremendous help in deepening our understanding of individual differ- ences in children’s social adaptation. In line with this argument, this study breaks new ground by compar- ing aggressive and prosocial children’s emotion Published online 4 November 2008 in Wiley InterScience (www. interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/ab.20289 Received 15 April 2008; Revised 6 September 2008; Accepted 18 September 2008 Grant sponsor: The Swiss National Science Foundation. Ã Correspondence to: Tina Malti, Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development, University of Zurich, Culmannstrasse 1, 8006 Zurich, Switzerland. E-mail: malti@jacobscenter.uzh.ch r 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.