Loopholes, a Window into Value Alignment and the Learning of Meaning
Abstract
Finding and exploiting loopholes is a familiar facet of fable, law, and everyday life. But cognitive, computational, and empirical work on this behavior remains scarce. Engaging with loopholes requires a nuanced understanding of goals, social ambiguity, and value alignment. We trace loophole behavior to early childhood, and we propose that exploiting loopholes results from a conflict in actors' goals combined with a pressure to cooperate. A survey of 260 parents reporting on 425 children reveals that loophole behavior is prevalent, frequent, and diverse in daily parent-child interactions, emerging around ages five to six and tapering off from around ages nine to ten into adolescence. A further experiment shows that adults consider loophole behavior in children as less costly than non-compliance, and children increasingly differentiate loophole behavior from non-compliance from ages four to ten. We discuss limitations of the current work together with a proposal for a formal framework for loophole behavior.