Department of Psychology, New York University.
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania.
Psychol Sci. 2022 Nov;33(11):1894-1908. doi: 10.1177/09567976221117154. Epub 2022 Sep 30.
From an early age, children are willing to pay a personal cost to punish others for violations that do not affect them directly. Various motivations underlie such "costly punishment": People may punish to enforce cooperative norms (amplifying punishment of in-groups) or to express anger at perpetrators (amplifying punishment of out-groups). Thus, group-related values and attitudes (e.g., how much one values fairness or feels out-group hostility) likely shape the development of group-related punishment. The present experiments ( 269, ages 3-8 from across the United States) tested whether children's punishment varies according to their parents' political ideology-a possible proxy for the value systems transmitted to children intergenerationally. As hypothesized, parents' self-reported political ideology predicted variation in the punishment behavior of their children. Specifically, parental conservatism was associated with children's punishment of out-group members, and parental liberalism was associated with children's punishment of in-group members. These findings demonstrate how differences in group-related ideologies shape punishment across generations.
从很小的时候起，孩子们就愿意为他人的非直接影响自己的违规行为付出个人代价进行惩罚。这种“昂贵的惩罚”有多种动机：人们可能会为了执行合作规范而惩罚（放大对群体内成员的惩罚），或者为了对犯罪者表示愤怒而惩罚（放大对群体外成员的惩罚）。因此，与群体相关的价值观和态度（例如，一个人对公平的重视程度或对外群体的敌意程度）可能会影响群体相关惩罚的发展。本实验（来自美国各地的 269 名 3-8 岁儿童）检验了儿童的惩罚是否会根据其父母的政治意识形态而有所不同——这可能是代代相传的价值观系统的一个代表。正如假设的那样，父母自我报告的政治意识形态预测了他们孩子惩罚行为的变化。具体而言，父母的保守主义与儿童对群体外成员的惩罚有关，而父母的自由主义与儿童对群体内成员的惩罚有关。这些发现表明，群体相关意识形态的差异如何在代际之间塑造惩罚。
