Previous work by Tasimi and Wynn (2016) suggests that children (5 to 8 years old) prefer to affiliate with other peoplebased on evaluations of their moral valence, but that this tendency is balanced against the childs personal costs andbenefits. We predicted that children from individualistic cultures may prioritize individual outcomes, whereas childrenfrom collectivistic cultures may consider social outcomes and harmony as more important. We applied a forced-choiceparadigm to measure childrens rejection of associating with a wrongdoer (mean person) by refusing stickers they offered,even though the alternative reward offered by a nice person was much smaller. Results suggest that overall, Asian childrenare more likely to reject wrongdoers than Caucasian children at the expense of personal rewards. We also found that suchcultural effects occur only among 7 to 8 years old children.

In previous work, young children avoided associating with a wrongdoer, despite incurring a personal cost. Such aversionto wrongdoers, arguably a reflection of moral development, weakens when the cost becomes very large (Tasimi & Wynn,2016). We model this moral decision-making process using the nave utility calculus (Jara-Ettinger et al., 2016), assumingutility maximization amidst uncertainty using Bayesian framework. The cost is defined as the number of stickers forgoneby choosing a nice persons smaller offer over a mean persons larger one, following the ratios of 1:2, 1:4, 1:8, and 1:16. Ourmodel aims to explain previous findings, and test predictions for new ratios. Compared to a baseline condition where nobackground information is available, children are predicted to choose the nice person when the cost is low, but reverse theirpreference when the cost becomes increasingly high, which would suggest a utility account for moral decision making.