ABSTRACT
Humans have the ability to reason about care-based, helping situations in early childhood, and intra-individual stability and change in these abilities are evident across childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood (Carlo, 2006; Eisenberg, 1986). Such reasoning, referred to as prosocial moral reasoning, occurs in helping opportunity contexts where there is conflict between one’s needs or desires and those of another, in the relative absence of formal laws or rules. Prior research suggests some similarities in prosocial moral reasoning development across cultures though most research has been conducted in Western (North American) industrialized societies (Carlo, 2006; Eisenberg, Fabes,&Spinrad, 2006). However, limited research exists in some European countries (e.g., Boehnke, Silbereisen, Eisenberg, Reykowski, & Palmonari, 1989; Mestre, Frı´as, Samper, & Tur, 2002; Skoe et al., 1999), in Brazil (Carlo, Koller, Eisenberg, DaSilva, & Frohlich, 1996; Eisenberg, Zhou, & Koller, 2001), in Turkey (Kumru, Carlo, Mestre, & Samper, 2012), and in Papua New Guinea (Tietjen, 1986). These researchers generally find that there aremany commonalities in the forms of prosocial reasoning across culture groups though the developmental emergence and frequency of some forms of prosocial reasoning may differ (see Eisenberg et al., 2006). However, studies of prosocial moral reasoning in other cultures are needed to further examine the development and universality of prosocial morality.
