45 research outputs found
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Dehumanization and perceptions of immoral intergroup behavior
This work investigated the extent to which adults dehumanize racists and the correlates of this dehumanization. Three main findings emerged:
(a) Adults perceived racists as less than fully human.
(b) The extent to which adults dehumanized racists predicted the degree to which they reported that ambiguous behaviors performed by strangers reflected racial bias.
(c) This association did not emerge when participants evaluated behaviors performed by their friends, suggesting that views of "racists" in general may not be linked with evaluations of behaviors performed by friends
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The Cognitive Science of Religion: A Case for the Importance of Adolescence
The cognitive science of religion proposes that religion and spirituality—including belief in God, conceptualizations of God’s mind, and reasoning about the religious beliefs of other people—are rooted in the same systems that underlie everyday cognitive processing. Because these systems change throughout development, the cognitive science of religion provides unique insight into how and why religious belief and reasoning develop. While a growing body of work has investigated these topics among children and adults, there are glaring gaps in the field’s understanding of adolescence. This article reviews what is known and unknown in this space. It also argues that applying the cognitive science of religion approach to adolescence would provide critical insight into the development of cognition in general and religious belief in particular
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The Development and Consequences of Moral Essentialism
Children report that many natural kinds, social groups, and psychological characteristics arise from an innate, internal “essence” that is rooted in biology and remains stable over time. These perceptions persist into adulthood, albeit often in weakened form. This paper argues that in addition to the domains previously examined in the essentialism literature, children—and to some extent adults—also view moral characteristics in essentialist terms. This form of essentialism has important social consequences, including in the area of pro-social behavior and in the legal domain. The body of evidence reviewed here suggests that children’s and adults’ moral judgments depend not just on what people do but also on perceptions of who those people are, i.e., whether they are people of good or bad moral character
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The Influence of Beliefs on Children's and Adults' Cognition and Social Preferences
Beliefs--mental representations of particular propositions as true--are fundamental to social cognition. Among the most influential beliefs are ideologies, which concern the way things should be and help people understand the social structures within which they live. Ideologies occupy a unique position because they contain elements of other types of beliefs. For example, to a Biblical literalist, the belief that the earth is 4000 years old may seem fact-like. Because not everyone agrees about ideologies, however, such beliefs may seem somewhat preference-like even to their strongest adherents. To investigate the role of social experience in reasoning about ideologies, we examined children and adults. Because children have significantly less experience with ideologies, their reasoning may diverge from adults. On the other hand, if children and adults respond similarly, this would indicate that vast amounts of experience are not necessary for adult-like belief-based cognition to emerge. Part 1 showed that 5-10 year old children and adults distinguished ideological beliefs from factual beliefs(a domain in which, if two people disagree, at least one must be wrong) and preference-based beliefs(a domain in which it is acceptable for people to disagree), indicating that much experience is unnecessary for this ability to emerge. Given that even young children recognize that those who disagree with their ideological beliefs are not necessarily wrong, it is possible that children would not show strong social preferences in this domain. On the other hand, given children’s propensity toward group-based preferences in other areas, even young children may show religion-based preferences. In Part II, 6-8 year old Christian children showed implicit pro-Christian preferences regardless of the comparison target’s religion but only reported pro-Christian preferences when the two targets were very different from one another. In Part III, 6-11 year old children preferred peers who shared their religious, factual, and preference-based beliefs and selectively attributed pro-social behaviors to individuals who shared their religious views. Taken together, these findings suggest that children and adults differentiate ideologies from other types of mental states and that, despite its complexity, ideology influences social judgments even among young children.Psycholog
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Moral Essentialism and Generosity Among Children and Adults
Children and adults view many characteristics in an essentialist way—as innate, immutable, and biological. Prior work has typically investigated essentialism regarding broad domains (e.g., gender rather than maleness/femaleness). Using the example of morality, the current work asked whether individuals view different components of one domain (goodness/badness) differently and whether such views might influence behavior. Five- to eight-year- olds reported more essentialism than adults; however, both children and adults viewed goodness in more essentialist terms than badness. Although views of morally relevant characteristics in general did not significantly predict generosity (Study 1), essentialist views of the recipient did influence generosity (Studies 2-3). Adults shared fewer resources than would be expected by chance with people whose badness was described in essentialist terms (and consequently more resources than would be expected by chance with people whose badness was described in non-essentialist terms), an effect that did not appear to be driven by demand characteristics and that persisted even when both descriptions explicitly noted that the character would always remain bad. Although adults reported less essentialism than children, essentialist descriptions appeared to influence their behaviors more. This work highlights the need to investigate essentialism regarding specific domain components (e.g., goodness/badness) in addition to the domain overall (e.g., morality), partially because essentialism impacts behavior differently across components. Findings also suggest that emphasizing situational factors contributing to wrongdoing and a transgressor’s ability to change may benefit people when they have committed moral violations
Language shapes children’s attitudes: Consequences of internal, behavioral, and societal information in punitive and non-punitive contexts
Research has probed the consequences of providing people with different types of information regarding why a person possesses a certain characteristic. However, this work has largely examined the consequences of different information subsets (e.g., information focusing on internal versus societal causes). Less work has compared several types of information within the same paradigm. Using the legal system as an example domain, we provided children (N=198 6- to 8-year-olds) with several types of information—including information highlighting internal moral character, internal biological factors, behavioral factors, and societal factors—about why a specific outcome (incarceration) might occur. We examined how such language shaped children’s attitudes. In Study 1, children reported the most positivity toward people who were incarcerated for societal reasons and the least positivity toward people who were incarcerated for their internal moral character; attitudes linked with behavioral information fell between these extremes. Studies 2a-2b suggested that Study 1’s effects could not be fully explained by participants drawing different about individuals in Study 1. Study 3 replicated Study 1’s results and showed that information linking incarceration with internal biological factors led to more positivity than information linking incarceration with internal moral character. Finally, Study 4 suggested that the patterns found in Studies 1 and 3 generalize to non-punitive contexts. Moreover, Study 4 found that the effects in Studies 1 and 3 emerged regardless of whether information was communicated via explanations or descriptions. These results demonstrate that how we express our beliefs about social phenomena shape the realities in which others live
Children's and adults' views of punishment as a path to redemption
The current work investigated the extent to which children (N=171 6- to 8-year-olds) and adults (N = 94) view punishment as redemptive. In Study 1, children—but not adults—reported that “mean” individuals became “nicer” after one severe form of punishment (incarceration). Moreover, adults expected “nice” individuals’ moral character to worsen following punishment; however, we did not find that children expected such a change. Study 2 extended these findings by showing that children view “mean” individuals as becoming “nicer” following both severe (incarceration) and relatively minor (time-out) punishments, suggesting that the pattern of results from Study 1 generalizes across punishment types. Together, these studies indicate that chil- dren—but not adults—may view punishment as a vehicle for redemption
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Children Deny that God Could Change Morality
Can moral rules change? We tested 129 children from the United States to investigate their beliefs about whether God could change widely shared moral propositions (e.g., “it’s not okay to call someone a mean name”), controversial moral propositions (e.g., “it’s not okay to tell a small lie to help someone feel happy”), and physical propositions (e.g., “fire is hotter than snow”). We observed an emerging tendency to report that God's ability to change morality is limited, suggesting that children across development find some widely shared aspects of morality to be impossible to change. Some beliefs did shift over development, however: 4- to 6-year-olds did not distinguish among God’s ability to change widely shared moral, controversial moral, and physical propositions, whereas 7- to 9-year-olds became increasingly confident that God could change physical and controversial moral propositions. Critically, however, younger children and older children alike reported that widely shared aspects of morality could not be altered. According to participants, not even God could change fundamental moral principles
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“Internally Wicked”: Investigating How and Why Essentialism Influences Punitiveness and Moral Condemnation
Kant argued that individuals should be punished “proportional to their internal wickedness,” and recent work has demonstrated that essentialism—the notion that observable characteristics reflect internal, biological, unchanging “essences”—influences moral judgment. However, these efforts have yielded conflicting results: essentialism sometimes increases and sometimes decreases moral condemnation. To resolve these discrepancies, we investigated the mechanisms by which essentialism influences moral judgment, focusing on perceptions of actors’ control over their behavior, the target of essentialism (particular behaviors versus actors’ character), and the component of essentialism (biology versus immutability). Participants punished people described as having a criminal essence more than those with a non-criminal essence or no essence. Probing potential mechanisms underlying this effect, we found a mediating role for perceptions of control and weak influences of essentialism focus (behavior versus character) and component of essentialism (biology versus immutability). These results extend prior work on essentialism and moral cognition, demonstrating a causal link between perceptions of “internal wickedness” and moral judgment. Our findings also resolve discrepancies in past work on the influence of essentialism on moral judgment, highlighting the role that perceptions of actors’ control over their behavior play in moral condemnation