Poster #128 - Six-year-olds Protect Others’ Reputations Against Unwarranted Blame

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

To reap the benefits of cooperation, it is vital to maintain a good reputation. By 5 years of age, children adjust their social behavior to protect their own reputations (Engelmann, Herrmann, & Tomasello, 2012; Fu, Heyman, Qian, Guo & Lee, 2015). But do they also manage the reputations of others? Recent research demonstrates that children’s early helping is not limited to support for others’ physical goals; preschool-age children also perform “social helping”, in which they support others’ social aims (Beier, Over, Carpenter, 2014; Beier, Terrizzi, Woodward, Larson, 2017). We thus examined whether 6-year-old children act prosocially to protect the threatened reputation of a third party.

Experiment 1 (n = 27 of planned 40) investigated how children react when one individual blames another for a negative event, and whether or not they distinguish between situations where the blame is appropriate or unwarranted. After meeting two puppet characters, one puppet left the scene. Later, children watched as water spilled on the absent puppet’s drawing. In the Purposeful condition, the remaining puppet deliberately poured the water over the drawing, whereas in the Incidental condition the water spilled on its own. When the drawing’s owner returned to find it ruined, she blamed the other puppet (currently not present); later, she also sought revenge by ruining the other puppet’s own drawing. We measured the frequency and strength of children’s protests and affirmations toward the owner’s blame-placing and revenge-seeking. Overall, children protested more often (p = .012) and more strongly (p < .005) when blame was unwarranted, and they affirmed the ascription of blame more often (p = .042) when it was appropriate. Additionally, children protested but rarely affirmed outright revenge; however, their responses during this phase were not influenced by whether revenge was justified.

These results establish that young children correct misplaced blame toward a third party, thereby protecting that individual’s reputation against unwarranted harm. We are now investigating the motivational basis for this behavior. Children who protest misplaced blame may do so as a prosocial act on behalf of the individual it targets; however, they may also be motivated to correct the blamer’s factual misunderstanding. Experiment 2 (n = 14 of planned 40) thus compares a Social Blame condition, in which a puppet is inaccurately blamed (replicating Experiment 1’s Incidental condition), with a Non-Social Blame condition, in which a fallen lamppost is inaccurately blamed. Following the blame-placing sequence, children provided evaluations of how good or bad it would be to incorrectly blame the target and to share this information with others. We anticipate that children will protest more, and judge it worse, when inaccurate blame has consequences for the reputation of a social agent. Analyses based on the completed samples for Experiments 1 and 2 will be presented.

Authors

• Amanda Mae Woodward, University of Maryland, College Park
  Presenting Author

• Suzanne D Woller, University of Maryland, College Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jonathan S Beier, University of Maryland at College Park
  Non-Presenting Author