Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

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.