Abstract
This paper addresses recent experimental-philosophy research on the concept of personal identity in developmental context. 217 Czech children and teenagers (56,4% female; age range 6-15; average age=11) participated in an interview study based on a hypothetical scenario about sudden change of their friend or some other unspecified person. Children were supposed to judge to what extent particular changes (from 6 categories of traits: moral, physical, cognitive, in character, perception and memory) would change true self of their friend or some other person on a 7-point scale.
Both positive and negative versions of the changes were introduced. Our data suggest that children consider moral traits (esp. traits connected to interpersonal relationships) crucial for personal identity preservation.
Also memory connected to personal experiences scored highly. On the other hand, children considered change in physical appearance as having the least important impact on personal identity.
Negative changes were seen as having significantly greater impact on the self than positive changes in all categories, except physical. Data is in accord with the "essential moral self" hypothesis (Strohminger & Nichols, 2014, 2015) and the concept of moral and good "true self" (Strohminger, Knobe, Newman, 2017; Tobia 2015, 2016).
It seems that these concepts are present already in children, even though the relative importance of moral traits and unimportance of physical traits grows with age. What is more, moral traits gain even larger priority when children are asked about change of their friend rather than some person in general, which emphasises the role of interpersonal relationships.