title: Preschoolers value those who sanction non-cooperators.
abstract: Large-scale human cooperation among unrelated individuals requires the enforcement of social norms. However, such enforcement poses a problem because non-enforcers can free ride on others' costly and risky enforcement. One solution is that enforcers receive benefits relative to non-enforcers. Here we show that this solution becomes functional during the preschool years: 5-year-old (but not 4-year-old) children judged enforcers of norms more positively, preferred enforcers, and distributed more resources to enforcers than to non-enforcers. The ability to sustain not only first-order but also second-order cooperation thus emerges quite early in human ontogeny, providing a viable solution to the problem of higher-order cooperation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, United States. Electronic address: vaish@virginia.edu.
authors.forename: Amrisha
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vaish
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany.
authors.forename: Esther
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Herrmann
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany.
authors.forename: Christiane
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Markmann
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tomasello
mesh_terms: D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D011678:Punishment; D066262:Social Norms
keywords: Moral development; Norm enforcement; Punishment; Reputation; Second-order cooperation