Study finds 7-year-olds start to treat words as a signal for future actions
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E-mail Xinhua, November 14, 2019
CHICAGO, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- Children begin to predict future behavior based on a person's statement about morals at around seven years old in elementary school, according to a study from the University of Chicago (UChicago).
The research relied on a series of experiments conducted with more than 400 children ranging from 4 to 9 years old.
In the first experiment, the participants were told about two children, one who condemned stealing and one who made a morally neutral statement. They were then asked to predict who was more likely to steal, and which theft should be punished more severely.
Participants in other experiments were asked to compare someone who condemned stealing with someone who praised sharing, as well as with someone who denied stealing.
In all cases, the 7- to 9-year-old participants were more likely than younger children (ages 4 to 6) to use condemnation as a predictor for future action.
A final experiment presented participants with someone who praised stealing and someone who condemned it. Both older and younger children predicted that the former would be more likely to steal, indicating that young children may have particular trouble using condemnation as a behavioral signal.
The researchers did not collect demographic information other than age and gender, and did not find significant gender-based differences in their results.
"Our findings suggest that children of this age are thinking critically about people falsely representing themselves in some way," said UChicago doctoral student Hannah Hok, the first author on the study. "They're thinking about reputation at a relatively early age."
"Children understand that when people's words - when they talk about moral principles - are discordant with their actual behavior, they should be punished more harshly," said Alex Shaw, the senior author and a leading expert on how concepts such as reputation and fairness develop in childhood.
The study has been published this week in the journal Child Development. Enditem
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