Children's and Adolescents' Accounts of Helping and Hurting Others: Lessons About the Development of Moral Agency

This study examined children's and adolescents' narrative accounts of everyday experiences when they harmed and helped a friend. The sample included 100 participants divided into three age groups (7‐, 11‐, and 16‐year‐olds). Help narratives focused on the helping acts themselves and reasons for helping, whereas harm narratives included more references to consequences of acts and psychological conflicts. With age, however, youth increasingly described the consequences of helping. Reasons for harming others focused especially on the narrator's perspective whereas reasons for helping others were centered on others' perspectives. With age, youth increasingly drew self‐related insights from their helpful, but not their harmful, actions. Results illuminate how reflections on prosocial and transgressive experiences may provide distinct opportunities for constructing moral agency.