The impact of testimony on children’s moralization of novel actions.

“…A similar process was demonstrated in a study of children by Rottman, Young, and Kelemen (). In this study, participants were presented with a series of 12 pictures portraying aliens engaging in novel behaviors (e.g., sticking cotton balls in their ear).…”

“…Indeed, Nichols (2002) showed that if conventional norms become coupled with affect (e.g., disgust), adults no longer perceive them as conventional norms and instead perceive them as belonging to the moral realm, and thus judge them as less permissible, more serious, and more contingent on authority than affectneutral conventional violations. This effect is also evident in development: by the age of 7 years, children moralize novel rule violations and judge them as more wrong when those rules are backed by affect-laden testimonies (Rottman and Kelemen, 2012;Rottman et al, 2017). These findings offer partial support to Nichols's account that affect is central to and forms the basis of adults' and children's domain distinctions.…”

“…Rather, children are prone to blind conformity in the moral domain and are predisposed to promiscuously moralize a wide range of actions upon brief exposure to normative behaviors (see Chudek & Henrich 2011;Rakoczy & Schmidt 2013;Tomasello 2016). A recent set of studies has indicated that learning new moral beliefs is not always a rational endeavor (Rottman et al 2017). This research failed to support a strong sentimentalist view, as incidentally elicited disgust was insufficient for producing moralization.…”