In this week's lab meeting, we discussed Thomas et al.'s (2022) article, "Intuitive sociology: Children recognize decision-making structures and prefer groups with less-concentrated power". This article explains how as children develop, they are able to distinguish between different decision-making structures within groups. Furthermore, children prefer groups with a shared decision-making structure, compared to hierarchical. This article highlights that being able to compare different social structures is crucial to children's social reasoning development, and may lay the groundwork for complex moral reasoning development.
Thomas, A. J., Mitchell, V., Sumner, E., Terrizzi, B. F., Piff, P. K., & Sarnecka, B. W. (2022). Intuitive sociology: Children recognize decision-making structures and prefer groups with less-concentrated power. Open Mind, 6, 25–40. https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00053
