ABSTRACT
This study aims to explore the contribution of parenting style and children’s understanding of others’ minds in morally relevant situations (morally relevant theory of mind) and moral judgment. To date, existing research has only focused on parenting and children’s theory of mind, or children’s understanding of theory of mind and moral standards. Therefore, this research aims to establish the connections among parenting, children’s theory of mind, and moral at the same time. The understanding of Morally relevant Theory of Mind (MoToM) and children’s moral judgment were assessed using MoToM tasks and the Prototypical Moral Transgression Scale developed by Killen et al. (2011), while parenting style was assessed using the Parenting Attitudes Inventory (PAI) of Vinden (2001) and O’Reilly and Peterson (2014). There were 122 participants involved in this study: children ranging from 4 to 6 years old and their parents. The results show that parenting style and children’s theory of mind contribute towards the children’s MoToM understanding by 35%. Theory of mind understanding also contributes towards children’s moral judgment in an intentional moral transgression situation (prototypical transgression). However, no significant correlation between parenting style and children’s moral judgment was found.
