Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Acting for the greater good often involves paying a personal cost to benefit the collective. In two studies, we investigate how children (N = 154, Mage = 7.94 years, SD = 1.13, Range = 6.03 – 9.98 years) reason about cost and consequence. Children predicted how many agents would pay a personal cost to prevent a consequence for their entire community and judged agent(s) who refused to pay this cost. In Study 1, children expected more agents to pay a minor cost to prevent a major consequence and judged defection as less permissible than in the opposite case. Study 2 investigated the intermediate cases (Major/Major and Minor/Minor Cost/Consequence). Children expected agents to pay a minor cost regardless of consequence, and only expected agents to pay a major cost when consequence was major. In their judgments, children only considered consequence – defection was more permissible when consequence was minor, regardless of cost.