Young children conform more to norms than to preferences

Abstract

As members of cultural groups, humans continually adhere to social norms and conventions. Researchers have hypothesized that even young children are motivated to act conventionally, but support for this hypothesis has been indirect and open to other interpretations. To further test this hypothesis, we invited 3.5-year-old children (N = 104) to help set up items for a tea party. Children first indicated which items they preferred but then heard an informant (either an adult or another child) endorse other items in terms of either conventional norms or personal preferences. Children conformed (i.e., overrode their own preference to follow the endorsement) more when the endorsements were framed as norms than when they were framed as preferences, and this was the case whether the informant was an adult or another child. The priority of norms even when stated by another child opposes the interpretation that children only conformed in deference to adult authority. These findings suggest that children are motivated to act conventionally, possibly as an adaptation for living in cultural groups.

Descriptive Norms Influence Children's Injunctive and Moral Norm Beliefs

“…Specifically, we found a difference between the conventional and COVID behaviors and the personal preferences, such that participants' injunctive beliefs were largely not influenced by descriptive norm information for independent personal preferences while they were for socially consequential behaviors that could affect other agents. This result aligns with recent work which found that 3.5-year-old children conform more to conventional norms than personal preferences (Li et al, 2021). However, in contrast to our predictions and past research, we observed an effect in the opposite direction for the behavioral intention measure: participants were actually more likely to say they would engage in the preference behavior when it was uncommon than common.…”

“…In contrast, when most people were talking in the library (i.e., negative conventional), children viewed doing so as less deserving of punishment compared to when only a few were talking in the library. This finding supports recent work with adults which finds that both second-and third-party punishment are influenced by descriptive norm information about how common it is for others to cooperate and punish free-riders (Li et al, 2021;Lois et al, 2019). However, this result conflicts with recent adult work which found that descriptive norm information had little influence on punishment judgements (Deutchman et al, preprint).…”

“…This distinction suggests that children's injunctive beliefs about preferences should be less influenced by descriptive norm information, if at all, as compared to conventional behaviors that are socially conditional and consequential, meaning that our decision to comply with them depends on others' beliefs and behavior and affects other agents. Indeed, young children tend to conform more to behaviors framed as conventional norms than personal preferences (Li et al, 2021), while adults update their beliefs less for preferences than conventional norms, suggesting they view preferences differently (Deutchman et al, preprint).…”

Children across societies enforce conventional norms but in culturally variable ways

“…Specifically, children learned the sorting rules via a video recording of a (male) native speaker who used generic language (e.g., “This is how you play this game.”) and then practiced sorting with peer partners. This wording and procedure ensured that children viewed the novel rule as a norm and not simply as an individual sorting preference ( 45 , 46 ). After children had learned their respective sorting rule, one child acted as the observer, and another child acted as the player ( Fig.…”

Cooperative descriptive norms change children’s pre-existing decisions and expectations about sharing behavior

“…Therefore, social norms about generosity only influence [6,25] , or the influence is higher [8,12] , on sharing decisions of children older than 7-9 years old. Children younger than 7 years old, although they understand social norms [26][27][28] , and even enforce them as third parties [27,29] , they behave selfishly during resource distribution tasks. This phenomenon is known as the "knowledge-behavior gap" and depicts a mismatch between what young children know to be a desirable sharing behavior and their actual behavior [30,31] .…”