Cross-Cultural Conceptions of Third-Party Intervention Across Childhood

• In Event: Developing Judgments about Moral Obligation

Abstract

Responding to wrongdoing is a central feature of human societies. Indeed, adults indicate that bystanders must punish transgressors (Martin et al., 2019), and children in the United States generally view punishment as obligatory, especially when the bystander is an authority figure (Marshall et al., 2019). Although most research has focused on punishment (Marshall & McAuliffe, 2022), bystanders have many other tools at their disposal beyond punishment. For example, a bystander could compensate the victim, terminate the relationship with the perpetrator, or encourage forgiveness. Even further, it is possible that how children and adults conceptualize intervention in response to wrongdoing may vary depending on the surrounding cultural and social context.

With this background in mind, the present study aimed (a) to assess the degree to which children across disparate societies view bystanders as obligated to respond to wrongdoing and also (2) to examine how children across many societies conceptualize bystander intervention beyond punishment. To address these questions, we tested 447 child participants (6-year-olds, 9-year-olds, 12-year-olds) in Germany, India, Uganda, and the United States. We presented participants with stories featuring three individuals: a perpetrator, a victim, and a bystander. In each story, the transgressor always pushed the victim. We also manipulated the Social Role of the bystander: one story featured an adult authority figure (i.e., a teacher), an adult non-authority figure (i.e., another student’s parent), and a non-authority peer (i.e., another student at the school). After each story, participants responded to a question about the degree to which they considered a bystander obligated to respond, “Do you think s/he/ has to do something about this? Yes or no? (If yes) How much do you think s/he has to? A tiny bit, a little bit, or a lot?”. After presenting all the stories, the experimenter measured how children conceptualized intervention by asking, “Let’s say [the bystander] does something about this. Can you tell me what you think he’d do?” for each social role.

Across all societies, younger children generally described each bystander as obligated to respond to wrongdoing regardless of Social Role (Figure 1). Older children in Germany, India, and the United States were more distinguishing on the basis of social role, while children in Uganda regardless of age maintained that all agents were obligated to respond to wrongdoing. In terms of participants’ explanations of intervention, we found substantial differences as a function of Culture and Social Role. In particular, children in the United States tended to conceptualize intervention as involving verbal intervention regardless of Social Role, such as telling people to stop acting meanly. Children in India and Uganda, however, tended to think of intervention as involving corporal punishment, especially when the bystander was an adult. Collectively, this work shows that younger children across different societies universally view all bystanders as obligated to respond to wrongdoing, although how that response actually materializes differs depends on culture and social context. Older children, however, vary in whether they relegate the obligation to respond to wrongdoing to authority figures.

Authors

• Julia Marshall, Boston College
  Presenting Author

• Anton Gollwitzer, Yale University

• Kellen Mermin-Bunnell, Yale University

• Jan Retelsdorf, University of Hamburg

• Paul Bloom, Yale University