Abstract
Rule violations are likely to serve as key contexts for learning to reason about public identity. In an initial study with 91 children aged 4-9years, social emotions and self-presentational concerns were more likely to be cited when children were responding to hypothetical vignettes involving social-conventional rather than moral violations. In 2 further studies with 376 children aged 4-9years, experimental manipulations of self-focused attention (either by leading children to believe they were being video-recorded or by varying audience reactions to transgressions) were found to elicit greater attention to social evaluation following moral violations, although self-presentational concerns were consistently salient in the context of social-conventional violations. The role of rule transgressions in children's emerging self-awareness and social understanding is discussed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1805-1821 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Child Development |
| Volume | 83 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2012 |