Evaluations of moral and conventional intergroup transgressions

Abstract

To investigate children's understanding of intergroup transgressions, children (3-8 years, N = 84) evaluated moral and conventional transgressions that occurred among members of the same gender group (ingroup) or members of different gender groups (outgroup). All participants judged moral transgressions to be more wrong than conventional transgressions. However, when asked to make a judgment after being told an authority figure did not see the transgression, younger participants still judged that moral violations were less acceptable than conventional transgressions, but judged both moral and conventional transgressions with an outgroup victim as more acceptable than the corresponding transgressions with an ingroup victim. Older children did not demonstrate the same ingroup bias; rather they focused only on the domain of the transgressions. The results demonstrate the impact intergroup information has on children's evaluations about both moral and conventional transgressions.

So It Is, So It Shall Be: Group Regularities License Children's Prescriptive Judgments

“…Do evaluative judgments apply only to behaviors (e.g., eating certain foods, speaking a certain language), or do they extend to beliefs as well (e.g., holding a specific ideology; for research on children's conceptions of others' beliefs, see Heiphetz, Spelke, Harris, & Banaji, 2013;Wellman, 2014)? Do children also negatively evaluate non-conforming individuals whose group norms are themselves negative (e.g., a person who decides to help, although hurting is more typical of their group; see Cooley & Killen, 2015;Mulvey, 2016;Rhodes, 2012;Smetana et al, 2012)? These important questions await future research, and promise to further reveal children's social-cognitive capacities.…”

Children's neural processing of moral scenarios provides insight into the formation and reduction of in‐group biases

“…Children will more positively evaluate (Bennett et al, 2004) and less harshly judge (Mulvey, 2016) an in-group versus out-group member. Children will more positively evaluate (Bennett et al, 2004) and less harshly judge (Mulvey, 2016) an in-group versus out-group member.…”

“…This propensity to associate with social groups may later manifest as in-group bias, a tendency to favor one's own group. Children will more positively evaluate (Bennett et al, 2004) and less harshly judge (Mulvey, 2016) an in-group versus out-group member. They also favor same-race peers (Dunham, Baron, & Banaji, 2008) and exhibit parochial tendencies in resource distribution (Fehr, Glätzle-Rützler, & Sutter, 2013;Moore, 2009).…”

Desentendimiento Moral Y Atribución De Culpa: Encuentros Y Desencuentros en El Estudio De La Cognición Moral

“…Por ejemplo, una vez un grupo de menores haga una distribución de recursos considerada injusta, pueden justificarse como grupo o individualmente diciendo que los receptores de los recursos son de un grupo diferente al propio, que se han portado mal en el pasado, o que la distribución es culpa del grupo y no de ellos, que solo se conformaron con lo que el grupo decidió; de este modo, se indica no solo una glorificación de grupo, sino la emergencia de lealtad que es esperada entre niños desde los cinco años (Misch, Over, & Carpenter, 2014;Peplak, Song, Colasante, & Malti, 2017;Mulvey, 2016). Afirmaciones verbales del tipo "no jugué con él/ella, porque no es mi amigo(a)" o "él se porta mal y por eso no jugamos con él", que reportan Wainryb y Brehl (2006) para situaciones en las que hay transgresiones morales en edad prescolar, encajan en mecanismos como la difusión de la responsabilidad, la comparación ventajosa o la culpabilización de la víctima.…”