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Restorative justice in children
Riedl, Katrin; Jensen, Keith; Call, Josep; Tomasello, Michael
Current Biology. 2015;25(13):1731-1735.
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Abstract
An important, and perhaps uniquely human, mechanism for maintaining cooperation against free riders is third-party punishment [ 1, 2 ]. Our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, will not punish third parties even though they will do so when personally affected [ 3 ]. Until recently, little attention has been paid to how punishment and a sense of justice develop in children. Children respond to norm violations [ 4 ]. They are more likely to share with a puppet that helped another individual as opposed to one who behaved harmfully, and they show a preference for seeing a harmful doll rather than a victim punished [ 5 ]. By 6 years of age, children will pay a cost to punish fictional and real peers [ 6â€Â“8 ], and the threat of punishment will lead preschoolers to behave more generously [ 9 ]. However, little is known about what motivates a sense of justice in children. We gave 3- and 5-year-old childrenâ€Â”the youngest ages yet testedâ€Â”the opportunity to remove items and prevent a puppet from gaining a reward for second- and third-party violations (experiment 1), and we gave 3-year-olds the opportunity to restore items (experiment 2). Children were as likely to engage in third-party interventions as they were when personally affected, yet they did not discriminate among the different sources of harm for the victim. When given a range of options, 3-year-olds chose restoration over removal. It appears that a sense of justice centered on harm caused to victims emerges early in childhood and highlights the value of third-party interventions for human cooperation.