Social exclusion, a pervasive and impactful phenomenon particularly prominent during preadolescence, has traditionally been construed through a moral deficiency lens. This study departs from prevailing research trends, casting a novel light on the phenomenon in the context of normative moral development. It elucidates the role of social exclusion…

A critical skill of childhood is learning social norms. We examine whether the generic pronouns "you" and "we," which frame information as applying to people in general rather than to a specific individual, facilitate this process. In one pre-registered experiment conducted online between 2020 and 2021, children 4- to…

This study examined the developmental profiles of children's social reasoning about individual agentive and deontic concerns. Tongan children (N = 140, 47.9% male), aged 4-8 years, were given a set of mentalistic (standard theory-of-mind) and deontic reasoning tasks. On average, children found diverse desires, knowledge access, hidden emotion, and…

Racism remains a pervasive force around the world with widespread and well documented harmful consequences for members of marginalized racial groups. The psychological biases that maintain structural and interpersonal racism begin to emerge in early childhood, but with considerable individual variation--some children develop more racial bias than…

Socialization is the process of learning to be a human being that is born with the potential to be human. In this process, the person learns the basic values and norms of the society in which he lives, as well as the skills necessary to sustain his life. This learning takes place through parents, siblings, relatives, neighbors, peers, teachers,…

Traditional values in many cultures prioritize a deep respect for the environment and a recognition of the interdependence between humans and the natural world. They can help to broaden children's thinking about their choices, inform their decision-making, and help ensure children develop a closer connection with nature and pursue sustainable…

The current studies (N = 255, children ages 4-5 and adults) explore patterns of age-related continuity and change in conceptual representations of social role categories (e.g., "scientist"). In Study 1, young children's judgments of category membership were shaped by both category labels and category-normative traits, and the two were…

Institutions make new forms of acting possible: Signing executive orders, scoring goals, and officiating weddings are only possible because of the U.S. government, the rules of soccer, and the institution of marriage. Thus, when an individual occupies a particular social role (president, soccer player, and officiator), they acquire new ways of…

Values have complex constructions and are influenced by the larger cultural ideologies of the society. The child-rearing values parents embrace for their children exert telling influences on their development. This study explores the values mothers wish to instil in their children in Jordan. Semi-structured interviews with 71 mothers were…

This commentary engages the three elements of a social justice framework in the study of African American Boys and Men's (AABM) positive development, proposed by Barbarin, Tolan, and Gaylord-Harden (2019). In agreement with the importance of and in support of employing a social justice framework in developmental science, we offer theoretical and…

Recent work has documented that despite preschool-aged children's understanding of social norms surrounding sharing, they fail to share their resources equally in many contexts. Here we explored two hypotheses for this failure: an "insufficient motivation hypothesis" and an "insufficient cognitive resources hypothesis." With…

The article discusses how young females navigate and develop a solid sense of two worlds in order to be perceived a 'good girl' that can be positioned within the society and maintain the female gender identity that is expected of them in the future. One world is where they are expected to show all the attributes of femininity and beauty and the…

Because it is so often said that children are the future, queer theory's attention to (and searing debates on) queer futurity offers something new and important to studies of childhood. Drawing on and deepening recent attempts to meld the fields of childhood studies and queer theory, I dwell on the contradiction that results from the synchronous…

The present three-study investigation examined cultural influences on the internalization of social expectations. Testing the claim of self-determination theory that lesser internalization of social expectations is linked to socialization practices that portray social expectations as in conflict with autonomy, in Study 1 we undertook a content…

Much research has investigated how children relate to norms taught to them by adult authorities. Very few studies have investigated norms that arise out of children's own peer interactions. In two studies, we investigated how 5- and 7-year-old children teach, enforce, and understand rules that they either created themselves or were taught by an…