Children's beliefs about the emotional consequences of norm adherence and violation

What behaviors make people happy? In the current studies, we investigated 4- to 7-year-old children's (N = 148) emotion attributions for people who follow or violate a conventional norm when doing so aligns or conflicts with other psychological motivations. In Study 1, we tested whether children believe people are happier when they desire (vs. do not desire) adhering to (vs. violating) a norm. In Study 2, we tested whether children believe people are happier when freely choosing (vs. being told) to adhere to (vs. violate) a norm. In both studies, children predicted the highest happiness levels for people who followed norms even when doing so conflicted with other psychological motivators (e.g., wanting or freely choosing to do something). Children also explained their emotion attributions by making reference to norms more often than to desires or personal choices. Results are discussed in terms of implications for children's own norm adherence and early socialization practices in Western cultures.

Mentalistic and normative frameworks in children's explanations of others' behaviors

As they learn to navigate the social world, children construct frameworks to interpret others' behavior. The present studies examined two such frameworks: a mentalistic framework, which construes behavior as driven by internal mental states; and a normative framework, which presumes people act in accordance with social norms. Participants included 101 children (ages 4, 7, and 10; 81% White; 41% female) and 35 adults (66% female) tested in the northeastern United States from 2019 to 2021. Children and adults utilized both mentalistic and normative frameworks to explain others' behaviors. Framework use depended on features of the behavior being explained. Minimal developmental differences were observed. The relative independence and the utility of the mentalistic and normative frameworks for naïve reasoning about behavior are considered.

Could, would, should: Theory of mind and deontic reasoning in Tongan children

This study examined the developmental profiles of children's social reasoning about individual agentive and deontic concerns. Tongan children (N = 140, 47.9% male), aged 4–8 years, were given a set of mentalistic (standard theory‐of‐mind) and deontic reasoning tasks. On average, children found diverse desires, knowledge access, hidden emotion, and belief emotion easier than the false‐belief and diverse belief tasks. Tongan children were sensitive to social norms governing behavior, and this information was recruited for predicting behavior in a false‐belief task when embedded in a socially normative context. We discuss the potential for cultural mandates to shape children's social understanding and the impact of culture on our theoretical framing of children's development.

How We Know What Not To Think

Humans often represent and reason about unrealized possible actions - the vast infinity of things that were not (or have not yet been) chosen. This capacity is central to the most impressive of human abilities: causal reasoning, planning, linguistic communication, moral judgment, etc. Nevertheless, how do we select possible actions that are worth considering from the infinity of unrealized actions that are better left ignored? We review research across the cognitive sciences, and find that the possible actions considered by default are those that are both likely to occur and generally valuable. We then offer a unified theory of why. We propose that (i) across diverse cognitive tasks, the possible actions we consider are biased towards those of general practical utility, and (ii) a plausible primary function for this mechanism resides in decision making.

Preschool Children's and Adults' Expectations About Interpersonal Space

The regulation of interpersonal distance and social space plays a central role in social behavior, and intrusions into personal space often lead to irritations in social interactions. Although there is plenty of research on people's actual proxemics in social interactions, less is known about how individuals represent and reason about social space, and whether there are age-related differences. The current study examined preschool children's and adults' predictions about others' interpersonal distances in two experiments. The findings show that preschool children have systematic expectations about others' proxemics. In addition, we found age-related differences as adults assumed people to keep greater interpersonal distance than preschool children.

Using versus liking: Young children use ownership to predict actions but not to infer preferences

Three experiments show that young children (N = 384) use ownership to predict actions but not to infer preferences. In Experiment 1, 3- to 6-year-olds considered ownership when predicting actions but did not expect it to trump preferences. In Experiment 2, 4- and 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, used ownership to predict actions, and 5-year-olds grasped that an agent would use his or her own property despite preferring someone else's. This experiment also showed that relating an agent to an object interfered with 3- and 4-year-olds' judgments that a more attractive object is preferred. Finally, Experiment 3 found that 3- and 4-year-olds do not believe that owning an object increases regard for it. These findings are informative about the kinds of information children use to predict actions and the inferences they make from ownership. The findings also reveal specificity in how children use ownership to make judgments about others, and suggest that children more closely relate ownership to people's actions than to their desires.