•  17
    Preschoolers Understand the Moral Dimension of Factual Claims
    with Emmily Fedra
    Frontiers in Psychology 9 398137. 2018.
    Research on children's developing moral cognition has mostly focused on their evaluation of, and reasoning about, others' intrinsically harmful (non-)verbal actions (e.g., hitting, lying). But assertions may have morally relevant (intended or unintended) consequences, too. For instance, if someone wrongly claims that “This water is clean!”, such an incorrect representation of reality may have harmful consequences to others. In two experiments, we investigated preschoolers' evaluation of others' …Read more
  •  53
    Children’s developing metaethical judgments
    with Ivan Gonzalez-Cabrera and Michael Tomasello
    Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 164 163-177. 2017.
    Human adults incline toward moral objectivism but may approach things more relativistically if different cultures are involved. In this study, 4-, 6-, and 9-year-old children (N = 136) witnessed two parties who disagreed about moral matters: a normative judge (e.g., judging that it is wrong to do X) and an antinormative judge (e.g., judging that it is okay to do X). We assessed children’s metaethical judgment, that is, whether they judged that only one party (objectivism) or both parties (relati…Read more
  •  58
    Young Children Enforce Social Norms
    with Michael Tomasello
    Current Directions in Psychological Science 21 (4): 232-236. 2012.
    Social norms have played a key role in the evolution of human cooperation, serving to stabilize prosocial and egalitarian behavior despite the self-serving motives of individuals. Young children’s behavior mostly conforms to social norms, as they follow adult behavioral directives and instructions. But it turns out that even preschool children also actively enforce social norms on others, often using generic normative language to do so. This behavior is not easily explained by individualistic mo…Read more
  •  13
    Fairness Expectations and Altruistic Sharing in 15-Month-Old Human Infants
    with Jessica A. Sommerville
    PLoS ONE 6 (10). 2011.
    Human cooperation is a key driving force behind the evolutionary success of our hominin lineage. At the proximate level, biologists and social scientists have identified other-regarding preferences – such as fairness based on egalitarian motives, and altruism – as likely candidates for fostering large-scale cooperation. A critical question concerns the ontogenetic origins of these constituents of cooperative behavior, as well as whether they emerge independently or in an interrelated fashion. Th…Read more
  •  84
    Humans are normative beings through and through. This capacity for normativity lies at the core of uniquely human forms of understanding and regulating socio-cultural group life. Plausibly, therefore, the hominin lineage evolved specialized social-cognitive, motivational, and affective abilities that helped create, transmit, preserve, and amend shared social practices. In turn, these shared normative attitudes and practices shaped subsequent human phylogeny, constituted new forms of group life, …Read more