Lets be Little Judges!

For 4- to 7-year-olds

Your child will see eight short illustrated stories with narration about two characters. In each story, one character loses cookies following an intentional action, a careless action, an animal escaping from a locked house or garage, or an event such as wind or a squirrel. After each story, your child will decide whether any cookies should be moved and use bars to rate how much each person is at fault and how careless each person was. If your child chooses to move cookies, they can give them to the other character or put them in a cookie jar where nobody gets them. Your child will first practice using the bars and moving cookies.

We are studying how children think about fault, carelessness, and responsibility when one person causes another person to lose something they value. Children distinguish between harm caused on purpose and harm caused by accident. This study asks how their judgments change across a wider range of events, including intentional actions, carelessness, an animal escaping from a locked house or garage, and events such as wind or a squirrel. We ask children to rate both people’s fault and carelessness and decide whether to move cookies to the other person or to a cookie jar where nobody gets them. This helps us understand how children’s judgments about what happened relate to the actions they choose afterward.

25 minutes

You will receive a $5 Amazon gift card (for Amazon.com) for participating in this study. To be eligible for the gift card, your child must be in the age range for this study and your child needs to be visible in the study video. Please also note that you must submit a valid consent statement. Each child is eligible to participate in the study and receive a gift card only once. Gift cards will be sent within one week. Please note that we can only offer Amazon gift cards for US residents, but we still invite everyone to participate. Thanks for your understanding.