Do young children accept responsibility for the negative actions of in-group members?

Abstract

This study investigated whether young children accept responsibility for the negative actions of ingroup members. Five-year-old children watched a transgressor break someone else's valued possession. Depending on condition, this transgressor either belonged to the same group as the child or a different group from the child. Coding of children's nonverbal behaviour indicated that they displayed more signs of guilt (but not other negative emotions) when the transgressor belonged to their own group than the other group. Furthermore, when the transgressor belonged to their own group, children were more likely to say that their own group should apologise for the damage and that they themselves should try to repair the broken object. Children's connections to their groups are thus so profound that they appear to feel responsible for the negative actions of their group members even when they had no personal involvement in the harm those actions caused.

Metadata

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Over, Harriet https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9461-043X Vaish, Amrisha Tomasello, Michael
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© 2016 Elsevier Inc. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details. Embargo period: 24 months. Funding Information: We would like to thank Katja Buschmann, Laura Frost, Sandra Griebel, Isabelle Lehn, Angela Loose, Juliane Richter and Claudia Salamo for help with testing, Evgenia Kokhan, Hella Franke, and Ramona Frickel for help with coding, and Cade McCall for valuable discussions. [masked for review] was supported by the ESRC (grant ref no: ES/K006702/1 ) and [masked for review] was supported by a Dilthey Fellowship from the Volkswagen and Fritz Thyssen Foundations . Harriet Over was supported by the ESRC (grant ref no: ES/K006702/1) and Amrisha Vaish was supported by a Dilthey Fellowship from the Volkswagen and Fritz Thyssen Foundations. Publisher Copyright: © 2016 Elsevier Inc.
Keywords:	Collective responsibility,Group membership,Guilt,Prosocial behaviour
Dates:	Published: 1 October 2016 Published (online): September 2016 Accepted: 18 August 2016
Institution:	The University of York
Academic Units:	The University of York > Faculty of Sciences (York) > Psychology (York)
Depositing User:	Pure (York)
Date Deposited:	02 Sep 2016 10:32
Last Modified:	08 Feb 2025 00:20
Published Version:	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2016.08.004
Status:	Published
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.1016/j.cogdev.2016.08.004
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:104311

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Do young children accept responsibility for the negative actions of in-group members?

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