Children’s developing notions of (im)partiality

Abstract

This research examines the development of children's understanding that people's judgments may be skewed by relationships, and that situational factors may make it difficult to be impartial. 171 adults and children between kindergarten and eighth grade heard stories about judges in contests with objective or subjective criteria for winning. In Experiment 1, by fourth grade, children rated a judge with no personal connection (the "neutral judge") as being more likely to be objective than a judge with a personal connection (the "connected judge"). Younger children showed the opposite pattern. Experiment 2 replicated this finding for judges, and also found that children across development have similar ideas regarding the characteristics for being a good judge. Not until eighth grade, however, did children indicate that a connected judge was more problematic in subjective situations than in objective ones.Standing in front of the United States Senate as a nominee for the Supreme Court, Samuel Alito was recently inundated with questions regarding his political background and his agenda for sitting on the highest court in the country. Time and time again, senators asked Alito about his qualifications in light of his politics, clearly concerned that Alito's conservative leanings might color his judgments regarding the future of several key laws.In everyday life, people often show concern about others' qualifications to make judgments about information. In court cases, people with personal connections to the criminals are not allowed to serve on the jury. In international athletic contests, great effort is taken to ensure that judges do not give significantly higher scores to contestants from their own countries, often by preventing them from judging their compatriots. In academic settings, researchers are prevented from evaluating grants and research articles from their colleagues. People assume that judges in these situations may be poor evaluators of information, implicitly biased by their preexisting beliefs or preferences, or that they may be unfair in their judgments, even to the point of deliberate deception. This article examines how intuitions regarding partiality as well as other characteristics of being a good judge emerge in development.Why do we care about the development of an understanding of partiality? Children and adults are bombarded with information from many different sources, and not all of these sources have pure intentions or provide accurate messages. Being able to predict that someone may make an inaccurate or skewed claim may help dampen the negative effects of such claims. In research with adults, for instance, the timing of discovering that testimony may be inaccurate influences how they remember the information. If adults receive some sort of discounting cue before being Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will u...

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“…Mills and Keil (2008) presented 5-to 14-year-olds with vignettes featuring judges presiding over objective (e.g., a running race) or subjective contests (e.g., an art contest). Children rated judges on a 1 to 5 scale reflecting how good of a job they thought they would do selecting the actual winners.…”

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“…That said, they do not necessarily keep that in mind when evaluating claims that may be incorrect due to bias, although they are better at detecting negative bias (e.g., selecting against one’s enemy as the winner) than positive bias (e.g., selecting one’s friend as the winner; Mills & Grant, 2009). Eight-year-olds show more advanced reasoning as long as the evidence that the claim was likely biased is readily apparent (e.g., a judge chose a friend as the winner of the contest; Mills & Grant, 2009) or involves negative biases (Mills & Keil, 2008). Otherwise, if children are asked to infer accuracy based on information regarding personal connections, it is not until age 10 that children can do so (Mills & Keil, 2008).…”

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