Is the majority always right? Young children's normative interpretations of majority and dissenting peer behavior

The present study investigates the social-cognitive underpinnings of young children's bias to follow the majority. More specifically, we focus on the question of whether children not only copy the behavior of a majority of peers, but whether they also understand this majority behavior as a social norm that everyone needs to follow. Additionally, we investigated whether seeing a unanimous majority or a majority and dissenting peer makes a difference for children's normative understanding. Participants included 180 preschool-age children (4-to-5 years old) who engaged in a conformity paradigm, where they either saw the behavior of a unanimous majority of peers, or additionally the behavior of a single dissenting peer, or only the behavior of two individual peers behaving differently (Control). Afterward, children mostly copied the unanimous majority and protested against others, when they deviated from this majority, thus indeed interpreting the behavior of a unanimous majority as a norm that others need to follow. However, when they had seen a majority as well as a dissenter, children's protest and copying in favor of the majority dropped. Overall, our findings show that preschool children interpret the behavior of a unanimous majority as normative. However, when children additionally see a dissenter's behavior, this normative interpretation is weakened

INCLUDE - Preschoolers' social inclusion of out-group members

A great body of research examined children’s social exclusion behavior and reactions to social exclusion. Surprisingly, social inclusion has not been investigated to such degrees. So far it remains unclear how social inclusion of others develops in middle childhood. In addition, the paradigms used in this field often base on self-report or potential behavior in story vignettes. Action-based paradigms are needed to improve the investigation of social in- and exclusion behavior. We developed a novel task following the Cyberball paradigm to assess preschoolers’ social inclusion behavior and overcome existing methodological gaps of previous studies. We want to investigate the trajectory of social inclusion in preschool ages. Further we want to find out how this behavior is influenced by group membership

GAP - Games and Prosocial Behavior in Preschoolers

How do games influence prosociality? Based on the Social Interdependence Theory (SIT) three different gaming contexts (relations between gamers’ goals) can be deduced – cooperative, competitive and individual. According to SIT, cooperative contexts foster more prosociality towards co-players than competitive or individual ones, which is supported by game studies with children and adults (e.g. Anderson & Morrow, 1995; Bay-Hinitz, Peterson, & Quilitch, 1994; Ewoldsen et al., 2012; Garaigordobil, & Echebarria, 1995; Grineski, 1991; Orlick, 1981; Street, Hoppe, Kingsbury, & Ma, 2004). In previous research, gaming context is often confounded with other variables (e.g. content or outcome), which impedes an unambiguous interpretation of the results. Which part of the promoted prosociality can be ascribed to the gaming context? Another related issue is the scope of the game-induced prosocial behavior. Following recent studies with adults, cooperative games do not only promote prosociality towards co-players, but also towards unfamiliar persons (Greitemeyer & Cox, 2013; Jin & Li, 2017). To date, this question has not been investigated in children. How does the gaming context influence the prosociality of children towards unfamiliar persons? A newly developed game “KoKo” for one or two players which can be played cooperatively, competitively or individually is used for an experimental study. Dyads of 4- and 5-year-olds play KoKo in one of the three contexts. Hereafter a dictator game is used to measure sharing behavior. Inclusion of others is assessed by a ball tossing game, in which a new co-player joins the child’s group. Additionally, free play between the co-players is observed in regard to prosociality

Children's Developing Understanding of the Conventionality of Rules

Much research has investigated how children relate to norms taught to them by adult authorities. Very few studies have investigated norms that arise out of children’s own peer interactions. In two studies, we investigated how 5- and 7-year-old children teach, enforce, and understand rules that they either created themselves or were taught by an adult. Children (N = 240) were asked to either invent game rules on their own or were taught these exact same rules by an adult (yoked design). Children of both ages enforced and transmitted the rules in a normative way, regardless of whether they had invented them or were taught the rules by an adult, suggesting that they viewed even their own self-made rules as normatively binding. However, creating the rules led 5-year-old children to understand them as much more changeable as compared with adult-taught rules. Seven-year-olds, in contrast, regarded both kinds of rules as equally changeable, indeed allowing fewer changes to their self-created rules than 5-year-olds. While the process of creating rules seemed to enlighten preschoolers’ understanding of the conventionality of the rules, school-aged children regarded both self-created rules and adult-taught rules in a similar manner, suggesting a deeper understanding of rule normativity as arising from social agreement and commitment.publishe

The influence of cooperation and competition on preschoolers' prosociality toward in-group and out-group members

Past research suggests that children favour their in-group members over out-group members as indicated by selective prosociality such as sharing or social inclusion. This preregistered study examined how playing a cooperative, competitive or solitary game influences German 4- to 6-year-olds’ in-group bias and their general willingness to act prosocially, independent of the recipient's group membership (N = 144). After playing the game, experimenters introduced minimal groups and assessed children's sharing with an in-group and an out-group member as well as their social inclusion of an out-group member into an in-group interaction. Furthermore, we assessed children's physical engagement and parents' social dominance orientation (SDO)—a scale indicating the preference for inequality among social groups—to learn more about inter-individual differences in children's prosocial behaviours. Results suggest that children showed a stronger physical engagement while playing competitively as compared with cooperatively or alone. The different gaming contexts did not impact children's subsequent in-group bias or general willingness to act prosocially. Parental SDO was not linked to children's prosocial behaviours. These results indicate that competition can immediately affect children's behaviour while playing but raise doubt on the importance of cooperative and competitive play for children's subsequent intergroup and prosocial behaviour

Deriving beliefs about children's moral responsibility from capacity beliefs

Adults have rich beliefs about children’s development timelines, and they interpret and react to children’s behaviors across ages, holding children responsible to some degree. While children’s mental capacity and potential could motivate moral agency attribution, a question remains whether a consistent relation exists between the empirical beliefs about children’s various capacities and the responsibility attribution to their behaviors that manifest the corresponding capacities. Here, we tested 361 adults (UK, US) on their folk psychology and moral beliefs about different ages with vignettes that reflect agential control in various domains (motor control, inhibitory control, theory of mind, planning, moral evaluation) combined with several variants of scenarios. We characterized the relation between adults’ expectations and responsibility attribution with mixed models. We found that this moral reasoning varies for targets of different ages and the amount of responsibility is mostly determined by age. We suggest an alternative mechanism between capacity- and moral beliefs

ICE - Cooperative games and prosociality toward outgroup members

How do games shape prosocial behaviors toward outgroup members? Here, we want to investigate how cooperative, competitive, and solitary gaming impacts subsequent prosociality toward outgroup members in preschool children. We focus on two aspects of prosociality: sharing and social inclusion behavior. Existing research suggests that in contrast to competitive and solitary games, cooperative games foster prosociality toward co-players and third-parties. So far, however, effects of games on prosociality toward outgroup members have not been investigated. In an experimental study design, we examine 4- to 5-year-olds sharing with in- and outgroup members and inclusion of outgroup members immediately after playing either a cooperative, competitive, or solitary game. Importantly, outgroup members are third-parties, meaning that they did not participate in the game and their group membership is not related to gaming