Rizzo Michael T, Cooley Shelby, Elenbaas Laura, Killen Melanie
Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
Community Center for Education Results, Seattle, WA 98144, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2018 Jan;165:19-36. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2017.05.006. Epub 2017 Jun 20.
Being a member of a peer group involves making decisions about whom to include in or exclude from the group. Sometimes these decisions are related to whether members of the group support or challenge the norms of the group. To examine how young children weigh concerns for group norms and group membership in both moral and social-conventional norm contexts, children (3- to 6-year-olds; N=73) were asked to decide between including an ingroup member who challenged the group's norm or an outgroup member who supported the norm. Groups held either moral (equal or unequal resource allocation) or social-conventional (traditional or nontraditional) norms. In the moral contexts, children were more likely to include the peer who advocated for the moral concern for equality regardless of the peer's group membership or their group's specific norm. In the social-conventional contexts, however, children were more likely to include the peer who advocated for the conventional concern for maintaining traditions but only at the group-specific level. Furthermore, with age children increasingly based their inclusion decisions on normative concerns, rather than on group membership concerns, and differed in their inclusion decisions for ingroups and outgroups. Finally, children reasoned about their decisions by referencing concerns for fairness, group norms, and group membership, suggesting that preschool children weigh multiple concerns when deciding whom to include in their groups. Overall, the current study revealed differences in how preschool children weigh moral and social-conventional concerns in intergroup contexts.
成为同龄人群体的一员涉及到决定群体中接纳谁或排斥谁。有时这些决定与群体成员是否支持或挑战群体规范有关。为了研究幼儿在道德和社会习俗规范背景下如何权衡对群体规范和群体成员身份的关注，研究人员询问了儿童（3至6岁；N = 73），让他们在接纳一个挑战群体规范的内群体成员和一个支持该规范的外群体成员之间做出选择。群体持有道德（资源分配平等或不平等）或社会习俗（传统或非传统）规范。在道德背景下，无论同伴的群体成员身份或其群体的具体规范如何，儿童更有可能接纳倡导平等道德关注的同伴。然而，在社会习俗背景下，儿童更有可能接纳倡导维护传统的习俗关注的同伴，但仅限于特定群体层面。此外，随着年龄的增长，儿童越来越多地将他们的接纳决定基于规范关注，而不是群体成员身份关注，并且在对内群体和外群体的接纳决定上存在差异。最后，儿童通过提及对公平、群体规范和群体成员身份的关注来为自己的决定进行推理，这表明学龄前儿童在决定接纳谁进入他们的群体时会权衡多种关注因素。总体而言，当前的研究揭示了学龄前儿童在群体间背景下权衡道德和社会习俗关注的方式存在差异。
