W9 Moral Flashcards
What are social norms?
- Norms are a form of “social reality” prescribing people act in certain ways in certain
contexts. - Opposed to idiosyncratic behaviours or preferences.
What are the two kinds of social norms?
- Moral norms: concerning the welfare of others evolved from two natural tendencies
* Natural tendency to help other
* Avoid to harm other
-> prosocial behaviours - Conventional norms: do not directly concern the welfare of others, 3 properties:
* Idiosyncratic: sometimes unusual
* Agent-neutral: applies to everyone in a group
* Context-specific
What is the classic view in children’s social norm development?
- Classic view: children are egocentric, selfish at birth, but gradually develop to follow social norms
- Age 4, children can distinguish different “domains” of social
norms. - Evidence: children gets interview on hypothetical scenarios when people violate a norm: moral vs. conventional
-> they understand the absolute importance of moral norms, but conventional norms are context-dependent and less serious - Evidence against: infants/young children show sophisticated understanding of social norm + early prosociality
What is meant by the two-sttep model?
Step 1: Second-person morality before age 3 (Preference)
* Sympathy + social preference (0-12 months)
* Collaboration and sharing - active prosociality (age 1- 3)
-> “It feels nice to be nice”
Step 2: Preschoolers’ norm-based morality (Agent-neutral)
* Enforcement of social norms
* Guilt and shame
-> “It is RIGHT to be nice”
Evidence that prosociality of infants is intrinstic vs. extrinsic?
- Pupil dilation = distress
- When adult needs help, in “Help” and “Other-help” conditions
-> children’s distress is reduced either way - When children caused the harm, they want to help themselves (guilt)
Evidence for prosociality in the two-step model?
Step 1:
* newborn was more distress when hear other babies’ cries than their own
* 6-10 months old infants prefer good guy over bad guy.
Does helping comes naturally?
Summary of step 1 (two-step model)?
- Early prosocial morality based on second-personal
interactions & relationships [0-3 years of age]. - Helping and concern about other individuals emerges early
and comes naturally. - Children are motivated to collaborate and consider their partners as equal.
- “Natural” morality becomes increasingly flexible.
- Morality begins in dyadic interactions without group norms.
What is the stage of normative conflict development?
Experiment:
Observing 3- and 5- years old when each learn conflicting rules on how to play -> incompatible condition
Result:
* Both 3- and 5-year-olds protested and corrected their peers’ actions
* It took 3-year-olds much longer to resolve the conflict and agree on a rule than 5-year-olds.
* 3-year-olds did not realize that the experimenter was the reason for disagreement.
-> The normative understanding gets more flexible in later preschool years.
How is step 2 (two-step model) investigated + drawbacks?
- Interview method relies on verbal ability, hypothetical
thinking, counterfactual reasoning -> can’t observe so less objective - Is moral judgment enough - will children act on this knowledge
- Can’t observe moral judgment in action:
-> Do children enforce norms on others?
-> Do young children appreciate generality of norms?
-> Do they enforce norms as an unaffected observer?
Do other species (e.g. chimpanzees) have norms?
- Understanding of norms
- Social groups of chimpanzees: when there is food in the middle, the dominant chimp eats everything
- Subordinate chimps the let alpha male to eat
everything out of fear.
-> Chimps do not have this “collective”
understanding.