Children intend to teach conventional but not moral norms selectively to ingroup members.

Abstract

Several studies have investigated factors guiding children's decisions when learning from others, although less is known about factors that govern children's decisions when they transfer knowledge to others. Here we asked whether children would privilege ingroup members when teaching and, if so, whether this tendency would persist when transferring different kinds of information (conventional norms vs. moral norms). In Experiment 1 (N = 24), we first replicated ingroup preference based on minimal group membership with 5-and 6-year-old Turkish children. In Experiment 2 (N = 64), we examined whether children would consider group membership and the type of knowledge to be transferred in their teaching intentions. Children were introduced to two ignorant targets differing in their group membership and were asked to choose one or both of these targets to teach conventional or moral norms. Children were more likely to choose ingroup members for teaching conventional norms and both members when teaching moral norms. Further, this trend was particularly evident among girls. These results suggest that children make flexible teaching decisions considering the social attributes of the learners and raise interesting questions regarding the mechanisms underlying children's information transfer. Public Significance StatementChildren consider various factors when choosing whom to learn from, although much less is known about children's selectivity when teaching others. We show that children intend to teach conventional norms selectively to ingroup members and moral norms to both ingroup and outgroup members. These results suggest that children make flexible teaching decisions taking both the nature of the information and the recipient's social attributes into account and provide further evidence for children's active role in cultural transmission.

Children use epistemic states flexibly to make diagnostic social inferences.

“…In light of this, people expect a cultural common ground between themselves and members of their group and adapt their social interactions and communication accordingly (Clark, 1996). Developmental studies suggest that, from an early age, children associate group membership and cultural knowledge and they guide their interactions with others based on this understanding (Diesendruck, 2005; Goldvicht-Bacon & Diesendruck, 2016; Karadağ & Soley, 2023; Liberman et al, 2018; Liebal et al, 2013). These studies mainly focused on children’s expectations about others’ epistemic states based on their social attributes, such as their familiarity or group membership.…”

Tradition and invention: The bifocal stance theory of cultural evolution

“…Emerging findings support the notion that children flexibly make selective decisions on what kind of information to transmit, to whom and when. They consider learners' goals and abilities (Gweon & Schulz, 2019), social group affiliation (Karadağ & Soley, 2022;, and occupations (Danovitch, 2020). Further, children do not transmit all learned information indiscriminately, but variably prioritize generalizable (Baer & Friedman, 2018;Gelman, Ware, Manczak, & Graham, 2013), cognitively opaque (Ronfard, Was, & Harris, 2016), simple (Bazhydai, Silverstein, Parise, & Westermann, 2020), and information acquired through explicit pedagogy .…”

“…For example, instrumental stance-taking may explain the finding that children provided more comprehensive information to the learner who requested information to enable them to effectively complete an action, and also when the learner was introduced as being "silly" compared to exceptionally smart (Gweon & Schulz, 2019). Ritual stance-taking might account for children's use of normative language and enforcement of conventional norms selectively with ingroup but not outgroup members (Karadağ & Soley, 2022;. To directly investigate whether observed selectivity in information transmission stems from flexible stance-taking, future studies should focus on systematically manipulating factors that may potentially trigger these stances during transmissionthose regarding both the nature of information and the social attributes of the learner.…”

Can bifocal stance theory explain children’s selectivity in active information transmission?

“…Emerging findings support the notion that children flexibly make selective decisions on what kind of information to transmit, to whom and when. They consider learners' goals and abilities (Gweon & Schulz, 2019), social group affiliation (Karadağ & Soley, 2022;Schmidt et al, 2012) and occupations (Danovitch, 2020). Further, children do not transmit all learned information indiscriminately, but variably prioritise generalizable (Baer & Friedman, 2018;Gelman et al, 2013), cognitively opaque (Ronfard et al, 2016), simple (Bazhydai, Silverstein et al, 2020), and information acquired through explicit pedagogy (Vredenburgh et al, 2015).…”

“…For example, instrumental stance-taking may explain the finding that children provided more comprehensive information to the learner who requested information to enable them to effectively complete an action, and also when the learner was introduced as being 'silly' compared to exceptionally smart (Gweon & Schulz, 2019). Ritual stance-taking might account for children's use of normative language and enforcement of conventional norms selectively with ingroup but not outgroup members (Karadağ & Soley, 2022;Schmidt et al, 2012). To directly investigate whether observed selectivity in information transmission stems from flexible stance-taking, future studies should focus on systematically manipulating factors that may potentially trigger these stances during transmission -those regarding both the nature of information and the social attributes of the learner.…”