Preschoolers learn new moral and conventional norms from direct experiences

Abstract

By observing others, children can learn about different types of norms, including moral norms rooted in concerns for welfare and rights, and social conventions based on directives from authority figures or social consensus. Two studies examined how preschoolers and adults constructed and applied knowledge about novel moral and conventional norms from their direct social experiences. Participants watched a video of a novel prohibited action that caused pain to a victim (moral conditions) or a sound from a box (conventional conditions), and then saw a transgressor puppet, who had either watched the video alongside the participant or not, engage in the prohibited action. Preschoolers and adults rapidly constructed distinct moral and conventional evaluations about the novel actions. These distinctions were evident across several response modalities that have often been studied separately, including judgments, reasoning, and actions. However, children did not reliably track the puppet's knowledge of the novel norms. These studies provide experimental support for the idea that children and adults construct distinct moral and conventional norms from social experiences, which in turn guide judgments, reasoning, and behavior.

The Lived Experiences of Preschool Children Ages 3–4: The Practices of Independence in the Case Some Pre School in Vietnam

“…These similarities include the physical and mental characteristics of preschoolers, such as behavioral commitment [12] or the four different domains of school readiness among the children: early learning skills, self-regulation, social-emotional development, and physical health and motor development [13], as well as how preschoolers and adults constructed and a sense of self. Additionally, according to the findings of these research, an accumulation of ACEs raised the percentage of items on which a child requires support or is at risk, independent of the school preparation domain studied [13] and Children and adults construct different moral and conventional norms from social experiences, which in turn guide judgments, reasoning, and behavior [14]; and significant relations between children's engagement and child and family demographic characteristics [12].…”

Act generously when others do so: Majority influence on young children's sharing behavior

“…Children are not merely passive recipients of pre-existing norms imparted by significant individuals in their lives. Instead, they are highly sensitive to information about social norms in their surrounding environment and actively engage in the construction of these norms (Langenhoff et al, 2022). They do this by responding to various cues and utilizing diverse forms of social interaction within their social experiences (Langenhoff et al, 2022;Schmidt & Rakoczy, 2023).…”

“…Instead, they are highly sensitive to information about social norms in their surrounding environment and actively engage in the construction of these norms (Langenhoff et al, 2022). They do this by responding to various cues and utilizing diverse forms of social interaction within their social experiences (Langenhoff et al, 2022;Schmidt & Rakoczy, 2023). For example, children can effectively construct sharing norms by directly observing how most others share in their immediate environment (Dahl & Turiel, 2019;Schmidt et al, 2016).…”

Descriptive Norms Influence Children's Injunctive and Moral Norm Beliefs

“…Social norms are a foundational part of human societies and pervade nearly every aspect of social life-from how we eat and dress to how we share resources. A large body of work has found that children and adults acquire, conform, and enforce social norms across a diverse range of contexts and behaviors, including social conventions (Song et al, 1987;Yoo & Smetana, 2022), moral behaviors (Vaish et al, 2011;Yucel & Vaish, 2018), sharing resources (House, 2018;McAuliffe et al, 2017;McQuire et al, 2018), and playing games (Diesendruck & Markson, 2011;Kanngiesser et al, 2022;Langenhoff et al, 2022;Rakoczy et al, 2008). How are we able to acquire these different kinds of norms?…”