Children spontaneously police adults’ transgressions

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2016.05.012Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We examined children’s tendencies to police behavior in live interactions.

  • Children ages 4 to 11 observed an adult confederate commit a transgression.

  • Forty-two percent of children protested the transgression.

  • Twenty-seven percent of children reported the transgression without being prompted.

  • The findings show that children will often risk retaliation to police adults.

Abstract

Maintaining social order requires the policing of transgressions. Prior research suggests that policing emerges early in life, but little is known about children’s engagement in such behavior in live interactions where there is uncertainty about the consequences. In this study, 4- to 11-year-old children (N = 158) witnessed an unfamiliar adult confederate intentionally destroy another adult’s property. Of interest was whether children would engage in policing behavior by protesting to the transgressor or by spontaneously reporting the transgression to a third party. Some children engaged in these behaviors spontaneously; nearly half (42%) protested the transgression, and 27% reported it without being prompted. Even when children did not spontaneously report the transgression, they almost always reported it when asked directly. The findings show that children commonly engage in policing even in the face of potentially negative consequences.

Introduction

Large-scale systems of cooperation and coordination among individuals who share minimal genetic relatedness are a unique and striking aspect of human societies (Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003, Fehr and Gächter, 2002). The viability of these systems depends on their members abiding by their norms and, thus, can be threatened by individuals who seek to undermine them. Such threats are often addressed by imposing social costs for antisocial behavior (Henrich et al., 2006, Mathew and Boyd, 2011). However, for this to occur, there must be some system in place for monitoring and reporting on transgressions. Recent research provides evidence that an interest in helping to fulfill this role first emerges during early childhood (see Tomasello & Vaish, 2013). However, little is known about children’s spontaneous policing in the context of live interactions with real people. The current research was designed to help fill this gap by examining children’s responses to an adult’s transgression.

One area of research that has addressed children’s reasoning about rule violations involves moral evaluations of story characters who report on the transgressions of others (Chiu Loke et al., 2011, Chiu Loke et al., 2014, Kim et al., 2014, Lyon et al., 2010). These studies have shown a developmental trend that begins during the preschool years in which children increasingly endorse the reporting of other children’s transgressions. By around 8 years of age, children begin to evaluate the reporting of severe transgressions (e.g., deliberately pushing a classmate to the ground) more positively than the reporting of less severe transgressions (e.g., bringing the wrong size of paper for an art project). These findings are generally consistent with evidence that even young children appreciate that not all transgressions are equivalent (Smetana, 2006, Turiel, 2002; see also Tomasello & Vaish, 2013).

There is also evidence that children are willing to act on their concerns about others’ transgressions. Observational studies of young children at home with siblings (Den Bak and Ross, 1996, Dunn and Munn, 1985) and in preschool (Ingram & Bering, 2010) suggest that they often report transgressions by siblings to their parents and report transgressions by peers to their teachers. This work shows that by 4 years of age children engage in such behaviors even when the transgressions do not directly affect them and there is no obvious self-interest at stake (e.g., a child with plenty of food reporting on a classmate who takes too much food at snack time). However, the fact that participants were interacting with highly familiar others raises questions about whether they might have been affected by the memory of previous transgressions (e.g., someone taking their food) and whether they might have been concerned about the possibility of transgressors repeating the behavior in the future (see Hawley & Geldhof, 2012, concerning strategically motivated moral behavior). It is also possible that children may be motivated to gain standing with important adults in their lives (e.g., to appear morally superior to the transgressor; see Dunn & Munn, 1985).

These observational studies also suggest that reporting on others in these contexts is unlikely to carry a significant social cost because parents and teachers typically do not reprimand children for providing information about wrongdoing of other children and instead tend to focus on the reported wrongdoing itself (Den Bak and Ross, 1996, Ingram and Bering, 2010). Thus, it seems unlikely that young children who are thinking about reporting on others would be concerned about potential retaliation or other negative outcomes in these contexts.

There has also been experimental work on children’s responses toward transgressors. Most of this work has been conducted with children who watch puppets act out scenarios (Kenward and Östh, 2012, Rakoczy, 2008, Rakoczy et al., 2009, Rakoczy et al., 2008, Rossano et al., 2011, Vaish et al., 2011, Wyman et al., 2009; see Schmidt & Tomasello, 2012, and Tomasello & Vaish, 2013, for reviews). This research has documented that by 3 years of age children actively police transgressions even when the transgressions do not personally affect them. For example, Rossano and colleagues (2011) examined the responses of 2- and 3-year-olds who observed a puppet violate norms about property rights by taking or throwing away an item of clothing that belonged to someone else. The 3-year-olds in the experimental condition protested more when a puppet took or threw away someone else’s clothing than did the children in a control condition who observed the puppet taking or throwing away his own clothing. Children’s protests were often expressed using normative language such as “You can’t do that. It’s hers.” In contrast, 2-year-olds tended to protest only when their own property was targeted.

Vaish and colleagues (2011) provided experimental evidence that children report on the transgressions of others. In that study, one puppet was shown destroying a picture or sculpture belonging to a puppet who was absent at the time. The 3-year old participants were more likely to report on the transgressor puppet (as well as to protest) under these circumstances than in a control condition where the transgressor puppet engaged in a victimless but otherwise similar act of property destruction.

There is also evidence from puppet studies showing contextual sensitivity in young children’s reporting behavior. Schmidt, Rakoczy, and Tomasello (2012) compared 3-year-olds’ responses to transgressions by puppets in an outgroup (i.e., who spoke with an accent) versus an ingroup (i.e., who did not speak with an accent). They found that participants did not differentiate between ingroup and outgroup members in the extent to which they protested against moral transgressions, but when it came to arbitrary game rules they held ingroup members to a higher standard.

Two of the experimental studies focusing on responses to transgressors have included people rather than puppets (Kenward and Östh, 2014, Köymen et al., 2014). Looking at responses to people is important because one cannot necessarily assume that behavior with puppets will translate to real-world social interactions. For example, it is possible that children are less concerned about retaliation with puppets (see Kenward & Östh, 2014). This issue is especially important in light of evidence that the possibility of retaliation is one of the primary factors affecting adults’ norm enforcement decisions against transgressors (Balafoutas & Nikiforakis, 2012).

In one study involving people as transgressors, Köymen and colleagues (2014) examined the responses of young participants (pairs of 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old friends) to conflicts that emerged after they were given differing instructions on a sorting task game. They found that the 3-year-olds were less flexible in their negotiations and took longer to reach agreement as compared with the 5- and 7-year-olds but that children in all age groups registered protests using normative language. However, this study leaves unanswered questions about how children might respond to rule violations in other contexts. In particular, it is unclear how children might respond when there is significant risk of facing negative consequences for responding. The children in Köymen and colleagues’ (2014) study were told that the task was a game, which rarely involves such risks. They were also interacting with friends, who they presumably felt comfortable with and already had a history of working with to solve problems. In addition, the children were enforcing rules with individuals of comparable social power, and the rules were handed down by adults with a higher level of social power (see Hartup, 1989, regarding horizontal vs. vertical relationships).

In another study that included people rather than puppets, Kenward and Östh (2014) examined children’s willingness to punish wrongdoers. In that study, 5-year-olds watched pairs of videos; one showed an adult behaving in an antisocial way (i.e., criticizing a drawing and tearing it up), and a comparison condition showed neutral behavior (i.e., placing a drawing on a table). Children were given an opportunity to give each adult either good sweets or disgusting sweets that were intended to be a punishment. Children almost always gave good sweets to the adult showing neutral behavior, but their gift for the antisocial adult varied; more than half (62%) gave disgusting sweets when told that their choice would be anonymous versus 21% when it was not anonymous. This study provides evidence that children are motivated to punish a real adult’s antisocial acts under circumstances where they have nothing to gain. The fact that punishment rates were so much lower when the choice of sweets was not anonymous also suggests that perceived risk is important, at least under circumstances where children are considering cost imposition behaviors.

We examined children’s policing tendencies (i.e., protesting and reporting) in a live interaction where the transgressions involved property damage carried out by unfamiliar adults. An unfamiliar adult acting as the transgressor provides a strong test of whether children will engage in policing behavior in the face of uncertain outcomes due to the power dynamics of the situation (see Hartup, 1989) and because interacting with an unfamiliar individual is likely to add to children’s sense of uncertainty about the possible consequences of policing behavior. We focused on a case in which a transgressor intentionally flouted the rules because policing in these kinds of situations is likely to have a broad social impact given that open disregard for rules can lead observers to question the need to follow them (Balafoutas & Nikiforakis, 2012).

We selected participants from a broad range of ages (between 4 and 11 years) in order to examine the early emergence of policing behavior and to determine whether the types of age-related change in children’s sensitivity to the severity of transgressions, which were noted above (e.g., Lyon et al., 2010), would also be evident in children’s policing behavior.

Our paradigm involved a staged event in which an unfamiliar adult confederate committed a transgression involving the destruction of property (see Hobson et al., 2009, Kenward and Östh, 2014, and Vaish et al., 2011, for related paradigms involving property destruction). The transgression was performed in front of children after the confederate stated that she was not going to follow the rules. This staged event allowed us to maximize experimental control while also allowing children to observe and respond to transgressive behavior that unfolded in front of them. Although it may be more common for children to observe other children engage in transgressions, they are also likely to observe adults engage in a wide range of identifiable transgressions such as cutting in line, littering, smoking in prohibited areas, disregarding traffic rules, and telling lies to promote their self-interest (see Heyman, Hsu, Fu, & Lee, 2013).

Participants saw one of two versions of the staged event involving property destruction that were designed to vary in severity. In the high-severity transgression the confederate tore out and drew on a printed page of a library book, and in the low-severity transgression she tore out and drew on a blank page of a notepad that she was told not to use. Of interest was the extent to which children would engage in direct policing by protesting to the transgressor. We also examined whether children would report the transgression to another adult. We expected policing to take the form of reporting more than protesting because when protesting children risk needing to deal with the anger or retaliation from the transgressor without anyone there to protect them. In contrast, when reporting, participants can avoid such direct confrontation. In addition, given that children typically have less power than adults, children might expect another adult to be more effective at influencing the transgressor’s behavior.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 158 children (82 boys). Participants were divided into a 4- to 7-year-old group (n = 76, 40 boys, mean age = 5.58 years, SD = 1.10) and an 8- to 11-year-old group (n = 82, 42 boys, mean age = 9.46 years, SD = 1.15) based on previous research indicating that starting at around age 8 years children become more likely to report transgressions when they are relatively more severe (Chiu Loke et al., 2011, Lyon et al., 2010).

Participants were recruited from various neighborhoods in a Canadian city

Results

Preliminary analyses showed no effect of gender on children’s protests, reporting of transgressions, or evaluations, so gender was not included as a factor in subsequent analyses. The manipulation check confirmed that participants rated the high-severity transgression more negatively than the low-severity transgression, and this rating did not interact significantly with age. For the high-severity transgression the mean rating was −1.76 (SD = 0.644), and for the low-severity transgression the

Discussion

The current research examined children’s policing tendencies in the context of live interactions involving uncertain outcomes. We did this by exposing children to a situation in which they were able to directly observe an adult confederate show defiance by openly engaging in a transgression (see Balafoutas & Nikiforakis, 2012, concerning retaliation risks in such situations).

Nearly half of the children (42%) engaged in policing of the transgression by protesting it. Their protests were often

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