Young children’s understanding of violations of property rights

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThe present work investigated young children's normative understanding of property rights using a novel methodology. Two-and 3-year-old children participated in situations in which an actor (1) took possession of an object for himself, and (2) attempted to throw it away. What varied was who owned the object: the actor himself, the child subject, or a third party. We found that while both 2-and 3-year-old children protested frequently when their own object was involved, only 3-year-old children protested more when a third party's object was involved than when the actor was acting on his own object. This suggests that at the latest around 3 years of age young children begin to understand the normative dimensions of property rights.

Origins of Human Cooperation and Morality

“…Pilot work with 2-year-olds showed almost no protest in such situations. Rossano et al (2011) found something very similar: 3-yearolds protested, again sometimes normatively, when one puppet threatened to take home or throw away another puppet's possession, whereas 2-year-olds only protested in an agentspecific manner (when the actor acted on the children's possessions and thus directly caused harm to them) but not in an agent-neutral manner. In both of these studies, 3-year-olds went beyond objecting to harm done to them and applied the moral norm against causing harm in an agent-neutral way: on behalf of someone else, as a disinterested enforcer, with the judgment marked as applying generally to all in the group.…”

Young children mostly keep, and expect others to keep, their promises

“…The later behavior is one indication that children understand that norms apply not only to themselves but also to other members of their group. There is a growing body of developmental work showing that from 3 years of age Western children actively enforce social and moral norms toward third parties in a variety of contexts such as game rules and ownership norms (Rakoczy & Schmidt, 2013;Rakoczy et al, 2008;Rossano et al, 2011;Tomasello & Vaish, 2013). This suggests that preschoolers understand in principle that norms apply to all individuals within similar contexts.…”

“…For example, 3-year-olds will actively correct a puppet actor that fails to play a game correctly (Rakoczy, Warneken, & Tomasello, 2008) or will intervene if a puppet tries to take someone else's property (Rossano, Rakoczy, & Tomasello, 2011), often using norm-related language during their interventions (e.g., ''You did that wrong," ''You must not do this"). Moreover, preschoolers also start to respond to moral transgressions and judge that it is wrong to harm others (Smetana, 2013).…”

Picture yourself: Self-focus and the endowment effect in preschool children

“…In the case of non-sentimental objects, children start to identify owners of familiar objects between 18 -24 months of age (Fasig, 2000) and soon after begin to use possessive pronouns like "mine" and "yours" (Hay, 2006). Young preschoolers already understand different rules of ownership (Kanngiesser et al, 2010;Friedman & Neary, 2008) and their normative implications (Rossano et al, 2011). Importantly, Levine (1983) has argued that the emerging sense of self is accompanied by increased use of personal pronouns and ownership expressions of "mine" related to objects.…”