Do Children and Adults Take Social Relationship Into Account When Evaluating People’s Actions?

Abstract

Two studies examined whether children (5‐ and 6‐year‐olds; 8‐ and 9‐year‐olds, n = 214) and adults (n = 72) consider social relationship when evaluating unhelpful or helpful actions. Participants learned about a person‐in‐need who was (or was not) helped by someone they knew (a friend) and someone they did not know (a stranger). Older children and adults judged an unhelpful friend as meaner than an unhelpful stranger, and judged a helpful stranger as nicer than a helpful friend. Younger children did not judge an unhelpful friend as any meaner than an unhelpful stranger, and they judged a helpful friend as nicer than a helpful stranger. These findings suggest that a mature appreciation of how social relationship matters for evaluation emerges relatively late in development.

Parental Beliefs and Knowledge, Children’s Home Language Experiences, and School Readiness: The Dual Language Perspective

“…Nonetheless, the current study has both theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, the current study expanded prior evidence of the role of parent-child relationship and interactions on children's social and cognitive development, such as individual's behavior (Berscheid, 1999;Reis et al, 2000), prosociality (Eisenberg et al, 2016), and evaluation processes (Geraci, 2020;Marshall et al, 2020), by applying the sociocultural theory, the bioecological model, and the developmental niche theory to the dual language learning context. Practically, the study added to the limited quantitative empirical data regarding parental beliefs and knowledge about dual language development and its relations with DLLs' dual language experiences and developmental outcomes, thereby informing the development of caregiver-focused language interventions for DLL families.…”

Toddlers' expectations of third‐party punishments and rewards following an act of aggression

“…The novel aspect of these findings concerns the sensitivity to the prosociality of an agent, as manifested by his defensive behavior towards the victim of aggression. This sensitivity is later expressed in older children's propensity to engage in costly third-party punishments for retributive (such as wanting an antisocial puppet to suffer as a form of "just desert") and consequentialist motives (such as wanting to deter future harms by teaching the transgressor lesson; see Marshall, Wynn et al, 2020). Indeed, it could be the case that toddlers, like older children, expected the bystander to punish the nondefender puppet because they wanted the non-defender to learn a lesson, and not because they wanted the non-defender to suffer (Marshall, Wynn et al, 2020;Twardawski & Hilbig, 2020).…”

“…This sensitivity is later expressed in older children's propensity to engage in costly third-party punishments for retributive (such as wanting an antisocial puppet to suffer as a form of "just desert") and consequentialist motives (such as wanting to deter future harms by teaching the transgressor lesson; see Marshall, Wynn et al, 2020). Indeed, it could be the case that toddlers, like older children, expected the bystander to punish the nondefender puppet because they wanted the non-defender to learn a lesson, and not because they wanted the non-defender to suffer (Marshall, Wynn et al, 2020;Twardawski & Hilbig, 2020). Furthermore, this data extends previous findings on young children's punitive motivations (Kenward & Östh, 2015;Marshall et al, 2019McAuliffe et al, 2015;Mendes et al, 2018;Riedl et al, 2015) suggesting a stable relation between toddlers' expectations about a bystander's rewarding and punitive motivations and children's behaviors.…”

“…Children seem to exhibit a strong and early tendency to punish through resource reduction (Geraci, 2020a(Geraci, , 2020bHamlin et al, 2011;Kenward & Östh, 2015;McAuliffe et al, 2015;Mendes et al, 2018;Meristo & Surian, 2013;Riedl et al, 2015) rather than through corporal third-party punishments (Meristo & Surian, 2014;Marshall et al, 2019). A potential objection to these findings may be concerned the effect of context that influences each individual's behavior and development throughout life (Berscheid, 1999;Reis et al, 2000), affecting the children and adults' factors that motivate prosocial actions (Eisenberg et al, 2016;Maner & Gailliot, 2007), and evaluations (Geraci, 2020a;Marshall, Wynn et al, 2020).…”

Obligations without cooperation

“…Social psychological and developmental research reveals that children and adults understand that obligations exist not only between collaborative partners but also between kin. For one, adults evaluate unhelpful parents more harshly than unhelpful friends followed by unhelpful strangers (Haidt & Baron 1996), as do older children and adults (Marshall et al, in press). These effects emerge presumably because parents are more obligated to their children and are, in turn, evaluated more negatively for failing to help them.…”