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Intuitive Sociology: Children Recognize Decision-Making Structures and Prefer Groups With Less-Concentrated Power

From an early age, children recognize that people belong to social groups. However, not all groups are structured in the same way. The current study asked whether children recognize and distinguish among different decision-making structures. If so, do they prefer some decision-making structures over...

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Autores principales: Thomas, Ashley J., Mitchell, Vivian, Sumner, Emily, Terrizzi, Brandon F., Piff, Paul K., Sarnecka, Barbara W.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MIT Press 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9692051/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36439067
http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00053
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author Thomas, Ashley J.
Mitchell, Vivian
Sumner, Emily
Terrizzi, Brandon F.
Piff, Paul K.
Sarnecka, Barbara W.
author_facet Thomas, Ashley J.
Mitchell, Vivian
Sumner, Emily
Terrizzi, Brandon F.
Piff, Paul K.
Sarnecka, Barbara W.
author_sort Thomas, Ashley J.
collection PubMed
description From an early age, children recognize that people belong to social groups. However, not all groups are structured in the same way. The current study asked whether children recognize and distinguish among different decision-making structures. If so, do they prefer some decision-making structures over others? In these studies, children were told stories about two groups that went camping. In the hierarchical group, one character made all the decisions; in the egalitarian group, each group member made one decision. Without being given explicit information about the group’s structures, 6- to 8-year-old children, but not 4- and 5-year-old children, recognized that the two groups had different decision-making structures and preferred to interact with the group where decision-making was shared. Children also inferred that a new member of the egalitarian group would be more generous than a new member of the hierarchical group. Thus, from an early age, children’s social reasoning includes the ability to compare social structures, which may be foundational for later complex political and moral reasoning.
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spelling pubmed-96920512022-11-25 Intuitive Sociology: Children Recognize Decision-Making Structures and Prefer Groups With Less-Concentrated Power Thomas, Ashley J. Mitchell, Vivian Sumner, Emily Terrizzi, Brandon F. Piff, Paul K. Sarnecka, Barbara W. Open Mind (Camb) Research Article From an early age, children recognize that people belong to social groups. However, not all groups are structured in the same way. The current study asked whether children recognize and distinguish among different decision-making structures. If so, do they prefer some decision-making structures over others? In these studies, children were told stories about two groups that went camping. In the hierarchical group, one character made all the decisions; in the egalitarian group, each group member made one decision. Without being given explicit information about the group’s structures, 6- to 8-year-old children, but not 4- and 5-year-old children, recognized that the two groups had different decision-making structures and preferred to interact with the group where decision-making was shared. Children also inferred that a new member of the egalitarian group would be more generous than a new member of the hierarchical group. Thus, from an early age, children’s social reasoning includes the ability to compare social structures, which may be foundational for later complex political and moral reasoning. MIT Press 2022-07-01 /pmc/articles/PMC9692051/ /pubmed/36439067 http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00053 Text en © 2022 Massachusetts Institute of Technology https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For a full description of the license, please visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Research Article
Thomas, Ashley J.
Mitchell, Vivian
Sumner, Emily
Terrizzi, Brandon F.
Piff, Paul K.
Sarnecka, Barbara W.
Intuitive Sociology: Children Recognize Decision-Making Structures and Prefer Groups With Less-Concentrated Power
title Intuitive Sociology: Children Recognize Decision-Making Structures and Prefer Groups With Less-Concentrated Power
title_full Intuitive Sociology: Children Recognize Decision-Making Structures and Prefer Groups With Less-Concentrated Power
title_fullStr Intuitive Sociology: Children Recognize Decision-Making Structures and Prefer Groups With Less-Concentrated Power
title_full_unstemmed Intuitive Sociology: Children Recognize Decision-Making Structures and Prefer Groups With Less-Concentrated Power
title_short Intuitive Sociology: Children Recognize Decision-Making Structures and Prefer Groups With Less-Concentrated Power
title_sort intuitive sociology: children recognize decision-making structures and prefer groups with less-concentrated power
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9692051/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36439067
http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00053
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