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.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/23719Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1371/journal.pone.0251228Publication Info
Li, Leon; Britvan, Bari; & Tomasello, Michael (2021). Young children conform more to norms than to preferences. PloS one, 16(5). pp. e0251228. 10.1371/journal.pone.0251228. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/23719.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Leon Li
Research Assistant, Ph D Student
I am broadly interested in language and morality. Some questions that have guided
my research include:How are ambiguous words represented in the mind?How do children
infer the mental states, such as beliefs or intentions, of moral agents?Why do transcendent
emotions, such as awe, lead people to be prosocial?Currently, my main research topic
is how children engage in moral reasoning with other people. I am thrilled to be investigating
language, morality, and th
Michael Tomasello
James F. Bonk Distinguished Professor
Major research interests in processes of social cognition, social learning, cooperation,
and communication from developmental, comparative, and cultural perspectives. Current
theoretical focus on processes of shared intentionality. Empirical research mainly
with human children from 1 to 4 years of age and great apes.
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