title: What is to be done? Children's ascriptions of conventional obligations.
abstract: It is often not apparent what people ought to do. Three experiments explored cues that children and adults may use to identify conventional obligations. Experiment 1 addressed the hypothesis that young children identify obligations with expected outcomes. Although preschool-aged (4-5 years) children often expected consistency, they and school-aged (7-8 years) and adult participants indicated that obligations may be at odds with costs and benefits. In Experiment 2, all participants realized that people may have obligations they are unaware of. Preschool-aged children often used information about obligations to identify characters' beliefs. In Experiment 3, preschool but not school-aged children reliably identified obligations with the desires of authorities. The results are discussed in terms of expectations about canonical relations between mental states, outcomes, and obligations.
authors.affiliation: University of Wisconsin--Madison, WI 53706, USA. cwkalish@wisc.edu
authors.forename: Charles W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Kalish
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cornelius
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D012919:Social Behavior; D012941:Social Responsibility; D012951:Socialization