LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

You get what you give: children's karmic bargaining.

Do children believe in karma - the notion that life events occur to punish or reward our moral behavior? In three experiments, we investigate 4-6-year-old children's willingness to endorse and… Click to show full abstract

Do children believe in karma - the notion that life events occur to punish or reward our moral behavior? In three experiments, we investigate 4-6-year-old children's willingness to endorse and engage in the practice of performing good acts in order to secure an unrelated future desired outcome, so-called 'karmic bargaining'. Most children agreed that performing a morally good social behavior, but not a morally negative or morally neutral non-social behavior, would increase the chances that future desired outcomes would occur, in both first-party and third-party contexts. About half of children also engaged in karmic bargaining behavior themselves. We conclude that a belief in karma may therefore reflect a broad, early-emerging teleological bias to interpret life events in terms of agency, purpose, and design.

Keywords: give children; children karmic; bargaining; get give; karmic bargaining; behavior

Journal Title: Developmental science
Year Published: 2017

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.