Who should get the cookies?

For 4-7 year olds

Your child will see a series of short illustrated stories about two characters. For example, one character might accidentally knock over a jar and cause the other to lose some of their cookies. After each story, your child will answer a few simple yes/no and rating questions about what happened, such as “Do you think anyone should be punished?” and “How much do you think each person is at fault?” Your child will then decide how they'd like to arrange the characters' cookies: giving them to the character who was harmed, or putting them in a cookie jar where no one gets them.

Previous research shows that children distinguish between harm caused on purpose and harm caused by accident, and that this distinction affects whether they think the person responsible should be punished. This study builds on that work in two ways. First, we look at a wider range of causes, not just “on purpose” versus “by accident,” but also carelessness and situations where fault is unclear, to see how finely children can make these distinctions. Second, rather than asking only whether someone should be punished, we ask your child to decide how to respond: by choosing whether to give the lost cookies to the character who was harmed, or to put them in a cookie jar where neither character benefits. The yes/no and fault-rating questions your child answers after each story (described above) measure these judgments, and the cookie-arranging decision measures their choice of response, together helping us understand how children's sense of fault connects to what they think should actually happen next.

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. Each child is eligible to participate in the study and receive a gift card only once. Gift cards will be sent within one week.