Whodunnit

Let's pretend that you're the mummy. You have two little girls. One of them breaks fifteen cups as she is coming into the dining room, the other breaks one cup as she is trying to get some jam while you are not there. Which of them would you punish more severely?

I didn't make up this story myself. That's the way the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget explored the child's understanding of morality. This story comes from my recent reading Teaching Right from Wrong: 40 Things You Can Do to Raise a Moral Child.

See what happens when Piaget conducted an interview with seven-year-old Constance:

Constance: The one who broke the fifteen cups...
Piaget: Have you ever broken anything?
Constance: A cup.
Piaget: How?
Constance: I wanted to wipe it, and I let it drop.
Piaget: What else have you broken?
Constance: Another time, a plate.
Piaget: How?
Constance: I took it to play with.
Piaget: Which was the naughtier thing to do?
Constance: The plate, because I oughtn't have taken it.
Piaget: And how about the cup?
Constance: That was less naughty because I wanted to wipe it.
Piaget: Which were you punished most for, the cup or the plates?
Constance: For the plate.
Piaget: Listen, I am going to tell you two more stories. A little girl is wiping the cups. She is putting them away, wiping them with a cloth, and she broke five cups. Another little girl is playing with some plates. She breaks a plate. Which of them is naughtier?
Constance: The girl who broke the five cups.

Suddenly I began to see parallels everywhere.

Let me explain.

Not too long ago, I signed an apology letter to the family of a patient who died in our hospital, saying sorry for our intern doctor who didn't turn up to certify death until an hour after the patient had his last breath. Hmmmm... Let's think about another scenario - and that is a real one, too - in which an intern doctor went to vertify that his patient was dead ten minutes before patient's electrocardiogram went completely flat. The nurse was a bit concerned with the occasional waveform displayed on the electrocardiogram paper, pointing out the waves that might imply few heartbeats. The doctor was less eager to wait for the electrocardiogram's going dead than the death of the patient. "Don't worry, can't we see that the electrocardiogram is abnormal enough? It will go flat pretty soon."

So that was that. Let's count. Sixty minutes' delay and a gap of ten minutes. Which of them would you punish more?