Young Children and Adults Show Differential Arousal to Moral and Conventional Transgressions

Abstract

From a young age, children understand and enforce moral norms, which are aimed at preserving the rights and welfare of others. Children also distinguish moral norms from other types of norms such as conventional norms, which serve to ensure coordination within social groups or institutions. However, far less is known about the mechanisms driving this differentiation. This article investigates the role of internal arousal in distinguishing moral from conventional norms. In a between-subjects design, 3-year-olds (n = 32), 4-year-olds (n = 34), and undergraduate students (n = 64) watched a video of either a moral norm violation (e.g., destroying another person's artwork) or a conventional norm violation (e.g., playing a game wrong). Participants of all age groups showed differential physiological arousal (pupil dilation) to moral and conventional norm violations. Participants of all age groups also attended significantly more to the victim of the moral transgression than the bystander in the conventional transgression. Further, this differential attention to the victim/bystander positively correlated with the change in participants' phasic pupil dilation to the norm violation. This is the first evidence that differences in internal arousal co-occur with (and possibly contribute to) the distinction that even young children draw between moral and conventional norms.

From electric shocks to the electoral college: How boredom steers moral behavior

“…Moral philosophers and psychologists have long been interested in the role of emotions in morality (Blair 1995;Haidt 2001;Hume 1896;Smith 1976;Yucel, Hepach, and Vaish 2020).…”

“…Little work has investigated whether affect is present in our perceptions of (and responses to) immoral acts. In a recent study we investigated the role of affect in developing this moral/nonmoral distinction (Yucel, Hepach, and Vaish 2020). If emotions are integral to morality, we reasoned, then violating a moral norm (e.g., against non-violence) should elicit more emotion than violating a non-moral or conventional norm (e.g., wearing shoes at work).…”

“…Therefore, we randomly assigned young children and adults to watch a video of either a moral norm violation (e.g., a person destroying someone else's artwork) or a non-moral norm violation (e.g., a person playing a game incorrectly; Yucel, Hepach, and Vaish 2020). We recorded participants' physiological responses by measuring how much their pupils dilated as they watched these videos.…”

Eliciting Forgiveness

“…For instance, are they equally useful for minor transgressions (e.g., making rude comments about others) and for major transgressions (e.g., racist comments), or is disclaiming perhaps insufficient when the impending transgression is egregious? Relatedly, are disclaimers just as effective for moral transgressions (those that cause harm) as for conventional transgressions (those that disrupt social coordination but do not harm anyone) (Smetana et al, 2014;Yucel et al, 2020)? Finally, all of these questions about understanding the functions of disclaimers must be addressed alongside research on when children begin to use disclaimers themselves, in which contexts, and how that changes during development and into adulthood.…”

The role of affect in feelings of obligation

“…Affect-laden testimonies, for example, moralize novel rule violations and elicit moral judgments from children (Rottman & Kelemen 2012; Rottman et al 2017). Similarly, among young children as well as adults, witnessing violations of moral norms induces higher physiological arousal than witnessing violations of conventional norms (Yucel et al, in press). As mentioned by Tomasello, as children begin to differentiate these social norms from one another, they begin to understand who is obligated to adhere to particular norms and when an individual is obligated to do so.…”