When should the majority rule?: Children's developing intuitions about majority rules voting

Abstract

Across many contexts, majority rule is used as a decision-making procedure to coordinate conflicts within groups. Despite the prevalence of majority rule procedures, it is unclear how children think about majority rule as a way to resolve group disagreements in early childhood, and how this develops across age. In four experiments, we explored 4- to 9-year-olds' early intuitions about majority rule voting (N = 814) in two countries: the United States and China. Specifically, we compared majority rule voting to two different ways of making decisions: a randomized decision (coin flip) and abiding by a single individual's preference. We found children preferred majority rule over letting a single individual decide by age 4, and over coin flip by age 6. We further demonstrated that children do not use majority rule indiscriminately. Instead, they clearly think majority rule is inappropriate in some circumstances: While they think majority rule can be used to resolve matters of preference for groups, they do not think an individual should obey what the majority wants when deciding for themselves. Furthermore, they do not think that the majority should rule, even for group decision making, when they recommend clearly immoral behavior. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on the development of procedural justice and group decision-making.