title: Children's norm enforcement in their interactions with peers.
abstract: This study investigates how children negotiate social norms with peers. In Study 1, 48 pairs of 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 96) and in Study 2, 48 pairs of 5- and 7-year-olds (N = 96) were presented with sorting tasks with conflicting instructions (one child by color, the other by shape) or identical instructions. Three-year-olds differed from older children: They were less selective for the contexts in which they enforced norms, and they (as well as the older children to a lesser extent) used grammatical constructions objectifying the norms ("It works like this" rather than "You must do it like this"). These results suggested that children's understanding of social norms becomes more flexible during the preschool years.
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
authors.forename: Bahar
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Köymen
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.|The University of Manchester.
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Lieven
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine-Cognitive Neuroscience (INM-3).|University Hospital of Cologne.
authors.forename: Denis A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Engemann
authors.affiliation: University of Göttingen.
authors.forename: Hannes
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Rakoczy
authors.affiliation: Harvard University.
authors.forename: Felix
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Warneken
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tomasello
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D010379:Peer Group; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology