Young children enforce social norms selectively depending on the violator’s group affiliation

How preschoolers react to norm violations is associated with culture

“…These results add to previous research showing enforcement of first-order norm violations (Casler et al, 2009;Köymen et al, 2014;Rakoczy et al, 2009Rakoczy et al, , 2008Schmidt et al, 2012 When looking at the three dimensions with the greatest association, some pathways appear to provide possible explanations. Members of societies which score highly in terms of institutional collectivism assume that they are highly interdependent within their group, and thus critical decisions are made by the group, not at the individual level.…”

“…During the preschool years, children start to understand that doing something the right way constitutes a social norm (Kalish, 1998;Piaget, 1932;Smetana, 1981;Tomasello & Vaish, 2013;Turiel, 1983), and they learn to enforce these norms when they encounter norm violators (Casler, Terziyan, & Greene, 2009;Köymen et al, 2014;Rakoczy, Brosche, Warneken, & Tomasello, 2009;Rakoczy, Warneken, & Tomasello, 2008;Schmidt, Rakoczy, & Tomasello, 2012). As a result, children are thought to identify with the social norms of their culture in a way that transcends their own individual interests (Schmidt, Rakoczy, & Tomasello, 2011).…”

Preschoolers understand the normativity of cooperatively structured competition

“…Another way to make sense of this pattern is that constitutive rules are clearly arbitrary (they could be changed if all agree), whereas the goal to win-based on the joint intention to compete-is inherent to the practice of competitive game playing (Rescorla, 2007;Roversi, 2010) and, thus, is more fundamental and non-arbitrary (if one were to change this aspect, one would abolish the whole practice of cooperatively regulated competition). Evidence from a different strand of research suggests that young children find non-arbitrary norms (e.g., moral norms prohibiting harming others) to be more objective and wider in scope than more arbitrary norms (e.g., conventional norms; Killen & Smetana, 2014;Schmidt, Rakoczy, & Tomasello, 2012;Smetana, 1981;Turiel, 2006; but see Rhodes & Chalik, 2013). Future research could assess to what extent young children understand rational game playing as unalterable and objective just like (prototypical) moral norms even though moral violations are presumably considered more severe (Dahl & Kim, 2014;Turiel, 2006).…”

Preverbal infants expect members of social groups to act alike

“…Infants in the homogeneous group condition looked significantly longer to inconsistent trials (60.1% of looking time) than to consistent trials [39.9%; t (15) = 4.41, P < 0.001]. For infants in the inanimate condition, the difference between looking times to inconsistent (49.4%) and consistent trials (50.6%) was not statistically significant [t (15) = 0.18, P > 0.8; the interaction between these two conditions alone, as seen in Experiment 2, was also replicated, F (1,30) = 6.886, P < 0.05]. Finally, infants in the heterogeneous group condition looked significantly longer to consistent trials (56.9%) than to inconsistent trials [43.1%; t (15) = 2.28, P < 0.05].…”

“…In the laboratory, preschoolaged children adopt labels for objects endorsed by the majority of informants and conform to consensus perceptual judgments and actions, and they copy the actions of ingroup over outgroup members when group membership is conveyed by native vs. foreign speech (9)(10)(11)(12)(13). Children even show an understanding of groupbased social norms in their reactions to others' behavior, protesting when ingroup members, although not outgroup members, break conventions (14,15). Stereotyping is similarly robust at early ages; within North American populations, for example, preschool children are influenced by the gender and racial stereotypes of their culture (7,16).…”