W9 Moral

Question 1

What are social norms?

Answer 1

• Norms are a form of “social reality” prescribing people act in certain ways in certain
  contexts.
• Opposed to idiosyncratic behaviours or preferences.

Question 2

What are the two kinds of social norms?

Answer 2

1. Moral norms: concerning the welfare of others evolved from two natural tendencies
   * Natural tendency to help other
   * Avoid to harm other
   -> prosocial behaviours
2. 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

Question 3

What is the classic view in children’s social norm development?

Answer 3

• 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

Question 4

What is meant by the two-sttep model?

Answer 4

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”

Question 5

Evidence that prosociality of infants is intrinstic vs. extrinsic?

Answer 5

• 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)

Question 6

Evidence for prosociality in the two-step model?

Answer 6

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.

Question 7

Does helping comes naturally?

Question 8

Summary of step 1 (two-step model)?

Answer 8

• 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.

Question 9

What is the stage of normative conflict development?

Answer 9

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.

Question 10

How is step 2 (two-step model) investigated + drawbacks?

Answer 10

• 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?

Question 11

Do other species (e.g. chimpanzees) have norms?

Answer 11

• 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.