‘I Won't Trust You if I Think You're Trying to Deceive Me': Relations Between Selective Trust, Theory of Mind, and Imitation in Early Childhood

Does children’s moral compass waver under social pressure? Using the conformity paradigm to test preschoolers’ moral and social-conventional judgments

“…Many children remained autonomous regarding their own judgments of social-conventional issues even when peers made unconventional social judgments. Such results are consistent with what is typically found in adults (Asch, 1956;Moscovici, 1980;Sherif, 1936) and preschoolers (Clément, Koenig, & Harris, 2004;DiYanni, Nini, Rheel, & Livelli, 2012;Lane, Harris, Gelman, & Wellman, 2014), reflecting the strength of perceptual reality when it comes to visual accuracy and the prescriptivity of norms when it comes to making moral and social judgments. Some researchers have even reported that some children tried to question or correct an adult informant (Koenig & Echols, 2003), suggesting strong autonomy in some children.…”

Children weigh the number of informants and perceptual uncertainty when identifying objects

“…Yet, these results conflict with research showing that young children tend to give more weight to their own perception (e.g., Clément et al, 2004;DiYanni & Kelemen, 2008;DiYanni, Nini, Rheel, & Livelli, 2012;Koenig & Echols, 2003;Lane, Harris, Gelman, & Wellman, 2014;Pea, 1982). From an evolutionary perspective, such a bias toward perceptual evidence makes sense.…”

The role of consensus and culture in children’s imitation of inefficient actions

“…The experimenter asked, ''If you were going to crush a cookie for a pie, which one would you need?'' The word ''need'' (as opposed to ''want'' or ''think you should use'') was chosen to parallel previous research using a similar paradigm (e.g., DiYanni & Kelemen, 2008;DiYanni et al, 2011DiYanni et al, , 2012. We believed that the word ''need'' was the term that could be interpreted most loosely, that is, either as the tool that was most functionally efficient or as the tool that was most socially accepted.…”

“…Indeed, humans are so prone to imitate that they sometimes imitate actions not required to achieve the particular goal (i.e., ''over-imitation''; Kenward, 2012;Keupp, Behne, & Rakoczy, 2013;Lyons, Damrosch, Lin, Macris, & Keil, 2007;Lyons, Young, & Keil, 2007;Nielsen, Mushin, Tomaselli, & Whiten, 2014;Nielsen & Tomaselli, 2010). Similarly, in some situations children imitate less efficient actions-despite the fact that these actions lead to sacrificing the intended goal (DiYanni & Kelemen, 2008;DiYanni, Nini, & Rheel, 2011;DiYanni, Nini, Rheel, & Livelli, 2012). Taken together, this research suggests that children view a demonstrated action to be socially prescribed and normative-even if it is irrelevant from a strictly pragmatic point of view (Kenward, 2012;Kenward et al, 2011;Keupp et al, 2013).…”