Developmental Psychology Already young children look for social rules in their behavior

Behaviors are already understood by small children as social norms
The psyche of children again and again poses special puzzles to scientists, whose decryption can sometimes provide insights into the foundations of human coexistence. In a recent study, scientists found that children are looking for norms and rules of behavior at an early age. At the age of three, they derive these from the behavior of their fellow human beings. Misbehavior is sometimes interpreted as a social norm.

According to the Ludwig-Maximillians-University Munich (LMU), children are overzealously looking for social rules. Even three-year-olds could quickly grasp social norms. However, behaviors are sometimes understood to be rule-led, which are not, and the children then insist that these self-imposed "norms" are adhered to, reports the LMU psychologist Dr. med. Marco F.H. Schmidt. The pursuit of social rules could ultimately be a key factor in human coexistence, scientists suggest. The researchers published their results in the journal "Psychological Science".

Social norms derived from behaviors
According to LMU psychologist Marco Schmidt, pre-school children derive rules from individual behaviors and spontaneous actions of others. Many rules are conveyed to the little ones through verbal commandments and prohibitions, such as saying "hello" or "thank you." The children should also learn to share and "just tear the shovel out of the hand of anyone in the sandbox," explain the researchers. The essential rules are taught to you early by adults. Such norms form a kind of "social cement" and play an important role in the creation and maintenance of human cooperation and culture. Marco Schmidt.

Not only do children learn about social norms through verbal commandments and prohibitions, but also early on they interpret behaviors as basic rules, even if the behavior is more spontaneous. (Picture: lalalululala / fotolia.com)

Children independently looking for standards
The research team has examined in a recent study, when and how infants develop a normative understanding and which psychological and motivational mechanisms underlie this development, according to the LMU. In the study, Marco Schmidt, in collaboration with Lucas P. Butler (assistant professor at the University of Maryland), Julia Heinz and Professor Michael Tomasello (co-director at the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig) could prove that three-year-olds social norms not only by learn direct instruction and prohibitions. Contrary to this assumption, the children are on their own looking for norms and even assume that these are where adults do not see any, the scientists report.

Even spontaneous behaviors are interpreted as rules
"Preschoolers understand individual behaviors and spontaneous actions of others very quickly as generalizable, rule-based, and binding," Dr. Schmidt, who led the study at the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, before moving from there to LMU in October 2015. As part of the study, the researchers let three-year-old children observe spontaneous actions by adults, with an unknown person, for example, taking tools and other objects out of their pockets and carrying out short, seemingly purposeful actions with them. In another variant, completely useless items were taken out of a garbage bag and also spontaneous actions were carried out.

Prostest in case of rule violations
For example, as part of the experiments with a branch a piece of bark was slightly pulled over the table, the scientists report. In further experimental variants, the same action was spontaneously and with the minimal educational request "Look!" Performed or apparently unintentionally accomplished with a loud "Ups!". Regardless of what the children saw, they rated "singular, spontaneous, and seemingly purposeless behavior as generalizable and unconditionally correct, as long as it was not unintentional," the researchers report. The children even expected that other subjects would do the same and protest if they handled the objects differently and thus violated the "social norm" implied by the children.

Striving for social norms promotes the cohesion of society
According to Dr. Schmidt is subject to "pre-school children the fallacy, to which the Scottish philosopher David Hume pointed out that what is, should be so." This also applies if they have observed a simple act by chance and only once and says nothing that it is subject to a standard or rule. "These findings suggest that early on, even without direct instruction, children draw far-reaching conclusions about the social world in which they live," adds Lucas P. Butler. According to Dr. Schmidt could view children's early basic propensity to see the social world as inherently normative and rule-based, an expression of their motivation to do things together, identify with their cultural group, and acquire cultural knowledge. Possibly it is "our common intimate relationship to social norms that holds human societies together at their core," Dr. Schmidt. (Fp)