3-134 - Why children punish others: trajectories and mechanisms

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

A defining feature of human societies is that people conform with social norms, even when doing so is costly. A key reason for widespread conformity with norms is that norm violators are often punished. Indeed, people are willing to punish norm violations both when they are victims of bad behavior (second-party punishment) and when they witness bad behavior between others (third-party punishment). Despite the critical role that punishment plays in maintaining social norms in humans, until recently, we knew relatively little about how punishment emerges during child development. However, a collection of recent studies has shown that, by mid-childhood, children will pay to punish bad behavior in others.

In this symposium we bring together four researchers studying the developmental foundations of punishment. Together we show that by studying punishment in children, we can gain insight into deep questions about the mechanisms that support punishment in humans. Our presentations offer an expansive view of factors that contribute to the development and expression of punishment in childhood. Our first two presentations explore the extent to which punishment decisions are related to emotional responses and behavioral control, our third examines whether children punish in order to harm the perpetrators of bad behavior or to protect their victims and our final presentation offers a first look at whether third-party punishment shows similar developmental trajectories across different cultures. By integrating new insights into the emergence of punishment and its supporting mechanisms, our symposium sheds much needed light on this critical aspect of human social behavior.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chair

• Katherine McAuliffe, Boston College

Individual Presentations

• Emotional reactions and children’s, adolescents’, and adults’ punishment of unfairness - Presenting Author: Michaela Gummerum, University of Plymouth; Belén López-Pérez, Liverpool Hope University; Lotte F. Van Dillen, Leiden University; Eric Van Dijk, Leiden University

• The role of behavioral control in costly punishment in two party interactions in middle childhood - Presenting Author: Nikolaus Steinbeis, University of Leiden

• Retributive justice in children - Presenting Author: Katherine McAuliffe, Boston College; Yarrow Dunham, [email protected]

• The development of third-party punishment in a non-WEIRD sample: ni-Vanuatu children punish similarly to Swedish children - Presenting Author: Ben Kenward, Oxford Brookes University; Henry Dixson, University of Auckland