3-182 - What are Norms Good For? Outcomes Related to Children’s Early Attention to Social Norms

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Children use social norms to guide their own actions and reason about others’ behavior from an early age (Rakoczy & Schmidt, 2013). However, individual children vary in the extent to which they learn, follow, and enforce norms, and little is known about the consequences of this variation. The present research uses diverse methodology to explore this topic, providing novel insights into a pillar of early social cognition.

Paper 1 explores whether preschoolers’ attention to social norms predicts their academic achievement. Children’s evaluations of norm violations and adherences predicted their concurrent report card grades, even when controlling for executive function and theory of mind measures.

Paper 2 investigates whether 7–11-year-olds’ social networks influence their normativity concerns. Children identified as having more friends demonstrated more innovative behaviors when completing a novel puzzle-box task, while children with fewer friends tended to conform to adult demonstrations.

Paper 3 uses longitudinal methods to determine whether attention to norms in infancy predicts behavior in toddlerhood. Nine-month-olds’ pupillary response to non-normative behavior predicted their giving behavior at age two years. Further, six-month-olds’ detection of norm violations predicted their simple inhibition at 18 months.

Paper 4 examines the relation between children’s normativity concerns and social biases. Children felt negatively about, and behaved discriminatorily toward, norm-violators. Additionally, children’s concerns with normativity predicted their race-based stereotyping.

Collectively, the papers suggest that children’s attention to norms relates to outcomes – positive and negative – across several domains, providing a novel perspective on the function of social norms in children’s lives.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chair

• Rachel Ann King, Cornell University

Individual Presentations

• Attention to Social Norms Predicts School Success in Early Childhood - Presenting Author: Rachel Ann King, Cornell University; Non-Presenting Author: Katharine E Scott, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Non-Presenting Author: Chuck Kalish, Society for Research in Child Development; Non-Presenting Author: Kristin Shutts, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Investigating the Relation Between Children’s Social Network Properties and the Propensity to Copy or Innovate - Presenting Author: Bruce Rawlings, Durham University; Non-Presenting Author: Rachel Kendal, Durham University; Non-Presenting Author: Dan Franks, University of York; Non-Presenting Author: Emma Flynn, Durham University

• Infants’ Processing of Descriptive Norm Violations Predicts Their Behavioural Competencies as Toddlers - Presenting Author: Ben Kenward, Oxford Brookes University; Non-Presenting Author: Joshua Juvrud, Uppsala University; Non-Presenting Author: Carin Marciszko, Uppsala University; Non-Presenting Author: Linda Forssman, Uppsala University; Non-Presenting Author: Marcus Lindskog, Uppsala University; Non-Presenting Author: Mari Fransson, Uppsala University; Non-Presenting Author: Marta Bakker, Uppsala University; Non-Presenting Author: Katharina Kaduk, Lancaster University; Non-Presenting Author: Josje M. DeValk, Uppsala University; Non-Presenting Author: Gustaf Gredebäck, Uppsala University

• Children’s Descriptive-to-Prescriptive Tendency Predicts Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Race-Based Normativity - Presenting Author: Cai Guo, Stanford University; Non-Presenting Author: Michelle Wang, Stanford University; Non-Presenting Author: Eliza Margaret Van Wye, Stanford University; Non-Presenting Author: Steven O. Roberts, Stanford University