Moral emotions in early childhood: Validation of the Moral Emotions Questionnaire (MEQ)

• Autor(a) principal: da Silva, B.M.S
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Ketelaar, L, Veiga, Guida, Yung-Ting, T, Rieffe, Carolien
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10174/33579; https://doi.org/Da Silva, B.M.S., Ketelaar, L., Veiga, G., Tsou, Y. T., & Rieffe, C. (2022). Moral emotions in early childhood: Validation of the Moral Emotions Questionnaire (MEQ). International Journal of Behavioral Development, 46(2):157–168. https://doi.org/10.1177/01650254221075031; https://doi.org/10.1177/01650254221075031
• topic: childhood development; emotion; psychossocial development; confirmatory factor analysis; self conscious emotions; moral emotions

Moral emotions are experienced in daily life and are crucial for mediating appropriate social behaviors, as they prevent individuals from committing transgressions. In this study, caregivers of 377 children aged between 2.5 and 6.5 years old completed the Moral Emotions Questionnaire (MEQ), a parent report aimed to separately identify the presence of shame, guilt, and pride behaviors in early childhood. To validate this newly developed questionnaire, a confirmatory factor analysis and measurement invariance were conducted, and internal consistency, and concurrent validity were tested. Outcomes confirmed that the three moral emotions can be individually identified through the MEQ, even at such an early age. The MEQ scales showed acceptable internal consistencies and the associations between the three moral emotions and externalizing behaviors, internalizing behaviors, and social competence were in accordance with previous research, therefore confirming concurrent validity.