Work

Young Children Understand the Role of Agreement in Establishing Arbitrary Norms—But Unanimity Is Key

Year: 2016

Type: article

Abstract: Human cultural groups value conformity to arbitrary norms (e.g., rituals, games) that are the result of collective "agreement." Ninety-six 3-year-olds had the opportunity to agree upon arbitrary norms with puppets. Results revealed that children normatively enforced these novel norms only on a deviator who had actually entered into the agreement (not on dissenting or ignorant individuals). Interestingly, any dissent during the norm-setting process (even if a majority of 90% preferred one course of action) prevented children from seeing a norm as established for anyone at all. These findings suggest that even young children understand something of the role of agreement in establishing mutually binding social norms, but that their notion of norm formation may be confined to conditions of unanimity.

Source: Child Development

DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12510

Authors: Marco F H Schmidt, Hannes Rakoczy, Teresa Mietzsch, Michael Tomasello

Institutions: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, University of Göttingen

Language: English

Topic: Child and Animal Learning Development

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: green

Funder: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft