Children’s Early Conception of Voting and Majority Rules

• In Event: Children’s Early Understanding of Group Coordination in Social and Epistemic Conflicts.

Abstract

In order to have an effective society, humans must coordinate group action. However, coordinating groups proves to be a difficult task, as individuals often disagree. To address this, the adult political world has formal and informal ways of coordinating decisions, such as majority rules voting. Despite the fact that developmental psychologists have long been interested in children’s interpersonal coordination, there has been no systematic research into how young children think about voting as a way to coordinate group decisions. The current experiments explore in what circumstances 4- to 9-year old children believe that majority rules voting is or is not a fair procedure.
In Study 1 (N = 90) we examined if and when children begin to endorse voting over another impartial procedure when making group decisions. We know from previous work that children endorse randomized procedures to make decisions (Grocke, Rossano, & Tomasello, 2015). Thus, exploring when children favor voting over such procedures provides a conservative test of children’s endorsement of voting. Children heard about a classroom that was trying to decide what they should have for snack: chips or popcorn. Children were told of two procedures the class could use to make this decision. The class could decide to flip a coin and decide by whether the coin came up heads or tails, or they could vote and go with the choice that most children in the class want. Participants were asked to choose which of these two procedures the class should use. We found that by the time children are 6- to 7-years old, they strongly believe a group should use voting over coin flips (4- to 5-year-olds thought the class should flip a coin rather than vote) (Figure 1).
In Study 2 (N = 180), we asked children a simpler question to examine if even 4- to 5-year-olds might endorse voting: whether the class should go with the majority preference or with what a single individual wants. Again, the class decided on what snack to have. Children were told three boys want chips (majority preference) and one boy wants popcorn (individual preference). What should the class decide? We found that children at all ages tested (even 4- to 5-year-olds) believed that one should go with the majority rather than the individual preference. However, the fact that children endorse voting here is consistent both with them believing voting is just, and also that the majority will get their way for others reasons (e.g. dominance, conformity). To examine this, in a second condition we used the same method but now mention that the lone individual who wants popcorn is choosing a snack for himself (rather than the group) and three others think he should get chips. Here children at all ages thought that the individual should get the snack he wants, not the one that the majority wanted him to get. Thus, children believe that voting is fair when deciding for the group, but not an individual (Figure 2). We discuss the implications of these results for children’s early notions about fairness and group decision-making.

Authors

• Hannah Hok, University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Alex Shaw, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Emily Rachel Gonsier Gerdin, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author