Children's reaction to unequal norm enforcement: The role of meta-norms in fairness judgments and emotion attributions

Abstract

Punishment is often perceived as a natural and unavoidable consequence for transgressions, serving to enforce social norms and promote fairness. However, children's understanding of punishment raises intriguing questions about their expectations for consistency and fairness in its application, especially when faced with unequal consequences for similar actions. This study examines children's responses to unequal punishment and the emotions they attribute to characters facing different consequences for identical transgressions. Across two experiments with a total of N = 189 children at 6 to 9 years of age, we investigated how they respond to situations in which individuals receive unequal punishment for the same transgression. Results show that when reasoning about these norm violations, children apply meta-norms–higher-order principles that regulate how norms should be enforced. Specifically, after seeing the teacher's response to the first transgressor, children expected the second transgressor to receive the same consequence—whether punishment or leniency—rather than favoring one treatment over the other. Moreover, children attributed mixed emotions to both punished and unpunished transgressors, suggesting that punishment may serve as a form of emotional relief that alleviates guilt. These results contribute to the understanding of children's complex moral reasoning, including their sensitivity to fairness in norm enforcement and their nuanced emotional attributions in contexts of unequal treatment.