Why do children overimitate? Normativity is crucial

Keupp, Stefanie; Behne, Tanya; Rakoczy, Hannes

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2013.07.002

Cited by 161 publications

(162 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Given children's capacity for identifying causally necessary actions (Kenward et al, 2011;Keupp et al, 2013) it is unlikely they would have failed to recognize this. Yet those who saw such demonstration replicated arbitrary actions at similar rates to children for whom the same actions were embedded in a sequence leading to the boxes being opened.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We do this by showing we are like others and behave in similar ways so as to be liked by them, and we follow and reinforce behavior we think makes us part of our perceived in-group; perhaps because we consider members of our in-group to be 'right' and we want to show them that we think this (Haslam & Reicher, 2012). Under this umbrella are arguments that overimitation emerges from a need for social affiliation (Nielsen & Blank, 2011;Nielsen et al, 2008;Over & Carpenter, 2012, 2013 or as a normative act emerging through interpreting actions as essential parts of a bigger conventional, generic activity (Kenward, 2012;Kenward et al, 2011;Keupp et al, 2013).…”

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Following what has become standard practice (e.g., Horner & Whiten, 2005;Keupp et al, 2013;Marsh, Pearson, Ropar, & Hamilton, 2013), here we treated only the replication of unnecessary steps (i.e., the 'arbitrary' actions) as overimitation.…”

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, children will copy an adult's redundant actions, including use of a tool to operate an opening mechanism, even after having discovered through their own trial-and-error learning simpler hand operations A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Tomaselli, 2010). In both cases it seems highly unlikely that children would interpret the modeled actions as being causally important, and in situations where they are explicitly asked they will respond that such actions are indeed not necessary (Kenward, 2012;Kenward et al, 2011;Keupp et al, 2013). Nonetheless, we do not yet know how children decide if a particular action is causally necessary or not, or if certain kinds of actions (e.g., those involving unnecessary additional steps, inefficient means or unnecessary styles) are more 'normative' than others.…”

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The perpetuation of ritualistic actions as revealed by young children's transmission of normative behavior

Nielsen

Kapitány

Elkins

2015

Evolution and Human Behavior

100

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Children will comprehensively copy others' actions despite manifest perceptual cues to their causal ineffectiveness. In Experiment 1 we demonstrate that children will overimitate in this way even when the arbitrary actions copied are used as part of a process to achieve an outcome for someone else. We subsequently show in Experiment 2 that children will omit arbitrary actions, but only if the actions are to achieve a clear, functional goal for a naïve adult. These findings highlight how readily children adopt what appear to be conventional behaviors, even when faced with a clear demonstration of their negligible functional value. We show how a child's strong, early-emerging propensity for overimitation reveals a sensitivity for ritualistic behavior.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The perpetuation of ritualistic actions as revealed by young children's transmission of normative behavior

Nielsen

Kapitány

Elkins

2015

Evolution and Human Behavior

100

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“…Although some accounts of overimitation have explained this puzzling behavior in terms of brute cognitive limitations (e.g., Lyons, Young, & Keil, 2007), recent work suggests there may be more to the story. Even when it is made salient to them that certain actions are not instrumental to achieving a goal, children still overimitate and protest third parties who fail to overimitate (Kenward, 2012;Keupp, Behne and Rakoczy, 2013). Hence, in these situations, it seems that children may be drawing conclusions about what is prescriptively appropriate on the basis of what they infer is conventional or normal.…”

Section: Learning Morality From Normalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Normality: Part descriptive, part prescriptive

2017

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a b s t r a c tPeople's beliefs about normality play an important role in many aspects of cognition and life (e.g., causal cognition, linguistic semantics, cooperative behavior). But how do people determine what sorts of things are normal in the first place? Past research has studied both people's representations of statistical norms (e.g., the average) and their representations of prescriptive norms (e.g., the ideal). Four studies suggest that people's notion of normality incorporates both of these types of norms. In particular, people's representations of what is normal were found to be influenced both by what they believed to be descriptively average and by what they believed to be prescriptively ideal. This is shown across three domains: people's use of the word ''normal" (Study 1), their use of gradable adjectives (Study 2), and their judgments of concept prototypicality (Study 3). A final study investigated the learning of normality for a novel category, showing that people actively combine statistical and prescriptive information they have learned into an undifferentiated notion of what is normal (Study 4). Taken together, these findings may help to explain how moral norms impact the acquisition of normality and, conversely, how normality impacts the acquisition of moral norms.Published by Elsevier B.V.

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The Evolution and Ontogeny of Ritual

Legare

Watson‐Jones

2015

The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology

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Convergent developments across social scientific disciplines provide evidence that ritual is a psychologically prepared, culturally inherited, behavioral trademark of our species. We draw on evidence from the anthropological and evolutionary science literatures to provide a psychological account of the social functions of ritual in group behavior. Solving the adaptive problems associated with group living requires psychological mechanisms for identifying group members, ensuring their commitment to the group, facilitating cooperation with their coalition, and maintaining group cohesion. We also examine evidence that the threat of social exclusion and loss of status motivates engagement in ritual throughout development and provides an account of the ontogeny of ritual cognition. The intersection of these lines of inquiry promises to provide new avenues for theory and research on the evolution and ontogeny of social group cognition.

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Why do children overimitate? Normativity is crucial

Cited by 161 publications

References 36 publications

The perpetuation of ritualistic actions as revealed by young children's transmission of normative behavior

The perpetuation of ritualistic actions as revealed by young children's transmission of normative behavior

Normality: Part descriptive, part prescriptive

The Evolution and Ontogeny of Ritual

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