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Crime and punishment are usually connected. An agent intentionally causes harm, other people find out, and they punish the agent in response. We investigated whether people care about the integrity of this causal chain. Across seven experiments, participants (total N = 1,709) rated the acceptability of punishing agents for one crime when the agents had committed a different crime. Overall, participants generally approved of such wayward punishment. They endorsed it more strongly than punishing totally innocent agents, though they often approved of punishing agents for their correct crimes more strongly. Participants sometimes supported wayward punishment when wrongdoers were punished for a different kind of crime than the one committed, and they supported several different kinds of wayward punishments. Together the findings show that people often tolerate breaks in the causal chain between crime and punishment.

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Quality education can build a sustainable, happier world, but what experiences support student well-being? Numerous laboratory studies suggest that prosocial behavior predicts greater psychological well-being. However, relatively little work has examined whether real-world prosociality programs are associated with greater well-being in primary school-aged children (aged 5-12). In Study 1, we surveyed 24/25 students who completed their 6th Grade curriculum in a long-term care home alongside residents called "Elders," which offered numerous opportunities for planned and spontaneous helping. We found that the meaning that students derived from their prosocial interactions with the Elders was strongly associated with greater psychological well-being. In Study 2, we conducted a pre-registered field experiment with 238 primary school-aged children randomly assigned to package essential items for children who experience homelessness and/or poverty who were either demographically similar or dissimilar in age and/or gender to them as part of a classroom outing. Children self-reported their happiness both pre- and post-intervention. While happiness increased from pre- to post-intervention, this change did not differ for children who helped a similar or dissimilar recipient. These studies offer real-world evidence consistent with the possibility that engaging in prosocial classroom activities-over an afternoon or year-is associated with greater psychological well-being in primary school-aged children.

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Many studies suggest that preschoolers initially privilege outcome over intention in their moral judgments. The present findings reveal that, in contrast, even younger preschoolers can privilege intentions when evaluating characters who successfully or unsuccessfully help or hinder a third party in achieving its goal. Following a live-action puppet show originally created for infant populations, children made a forced-choice social judgment (which puppet was liked) and two forced-choice moral judgments (which puppet was nicer, which puppet should be punished), and were asked to explain their punishment allocations. In two experiments (N = 195), 3- and 4-year-olds evaluated characters with distinct intentions to help or to hinder who were associated with either positive or negative outcomes. Both ages judged characters with more positive intentions as nicer, and allocated punishment to characters with more negative intentions; neither of these tendencies depended on the outcomes the characters were associated with. Three-year-olds' responses were somewhat less consistent than were 4-year-olds', in that 3-year-olds' judgments were disrupted by ambiguous harmful intent. Notably, children's social judgments were less consistent than their moral judgments. In a third and final experiment (N = 100), children evaluated characters with the same intention but who were associated with different outcomes. Children showed inconsistent responding across age and outcome valence, but only 4-year-olds evaluating two characters with positive intentions reliably responded based on outcome. When providing informative responses in all three studies, children most frequently explained their punishment allocations by appealing to the puppet's (attempted) hindering action or failure to help. These findings raise questions as to what underlies different patterns of response across studies in the literature, and suggests that observing live interactions may facilitate young children's intention-based moral judgments.

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Recent research has shown that infants selectively approach prosocial versus antisocial characters, suggesting that foundations of sociomoral development may be present early in life. Despite this, to date, the mental processes involved in infants' prosocial preferences are poorly understood. To explore a possible role of emotions in early social evaluations, the current studies examined whether four samples of infants and toddlers express different emotional reactions after observing prosocial (giving) versus antisocial (taking) events. Experimentally blind coders rated infants' and toddlers' emotional reactions to prosocial and antisocial interactions from video using a 1- to 7-point Likert scale of negative to positive emotion; reactions were rated as more positive after viewing prosocial compared to antisocial interactions in three of four samples. While the observed effects were small, a single-paper meta-analysis suggests that the findings are robust and stable across age. These results support the possibility that emotional reactions play some role in infants' sociomoral evaluations. Statement of contribution What is already known Infants prefer prosocial to antisocial individuals from the first year of life. Emotion plays some role in the sociomoral judgments of children and adults. What this study adds Infants and toddlers express more positive reactions after observing prosocial giving versus antisocial taking acts, though observed effect sizes are small. Naïve coders can predict at a better than chance rate what type of act an infant or toddler just viewed based on their facial expressions. Provides the first evidence that emotion plays some to-be-specified role in infants' and toddlers' sociomoral evaluations.

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Humans are extraordinarily prosocial. What inspires and reinforces a willingness to help others? Here we focus on the role of positive feelings. Drawing on functional accounts of positive emotion, which suggest that positive emotional states serve to alert actors to positive experiences and encourage similar action in the future, we summarize evidence demonstrating that positive feelings promote and reward prosocial behavior throughout development. Specifically, we highlight new and classic evidence from both child and adult research showing first, that various positive states prompt prosocial behavior, and second, prosocial action leads to positive states. We also consider the possibility of a positive feedback loop, wherein the emotional rewards of giving promote future prosociality.

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Whereas some evidence suggests that toddlers consider targets' deservingness when deciding whom to help, other research demonstrates that toddlers help indiscriminately. The present findings shed light on this discrepancy by demonstrating that although toddlers do exhibit selectivity in giving behaviors, their emotional responses are comparatively indiscriminate. Specifically, in Experiment 1, 20-month-olds (N = 64) were more likely to give preferred toys to prosocial versus antisocial puppets, and more likely to withhold toys from antisocial versus prosocial puppets. Experiment 2 (N = 64) ruled out low-level explanations for the effects observed in Experiment 1, demonstrating that toddlers do not show the same effects when puppets' toy preferences are unclear. Despite providing evidence for selectivity in giving behaviors, across both experiments, toddlers were happier after giving than before giving, regardless of what they gave or whom they gave to. These results reveal the possibility of a divergence in early prosociality: Toddlers' giving behaviors are responsive to recipient deservingness, but their after-the-fact emotional reactions are responsive to giving acts themselves. Results are discussed in terms of their relevance to the debate regarding whether toddlers' early prosocial behaviors are discriminate versus indiscriminate. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Humans readily evaluate third-parties' prosocial and antisocial acts. Recent evidence reveals that this tendency emerges early in development-even preverbal infants selectively approach prosocial others and avoid antisocial ones. Rather than reflecting attraction toward or away from low-level characteristics of the displays or simple behavioral rules, infants are sensitive to characteristics of both the agents and recipients of prosocial and antisocial acts. Specifically, infants' preferences require that the recipients of positive and negative acts be social agents with clear unfulfilled goals, who have not previously harmed others. In addition, prosocial and antisocial agents must act intentionally, in the service of positive and negative goals. It is an open question whether these prosocial preferences reflect self-interested and/or moral concerns.

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Two experiments explored preschoolers' social preferences and moral judgments of prosocial and antisocial others. In Experiment 1, 3- to 5-year-olds (N=74) observed helping and hindering scenarios previously used to explore sociomoral evaluation in preverbal infants. Whereas 3-year-olds in Experiment 1 did not reliably distinguish between the helper and hinderer when reporting social preferences or moral judgments, both 4- and 5-year-olds preferred the helper, judged the helper to be "nicer" than the hinderer, selectively allocated punishment to the hinderer, and were able to justify their punishment allocations. A simplified procedure and the addition of comprehension questions in Experiment 2 (N=24) improved 3-year-olds' performance, suggestive that their performance in Experiment 1 was likely due to processing or memory difficulties rather than an inability to engage in explicit social and moral evaluation. These studies reveal that young children readily interpret helping and hindering scenarios as socially and morally relevant.

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We report two experiments supporting the theory that children's understanding of ownership rights is related to their notions of body rights. Experiment 1 investigated 4- to 7-year-olds' (N=123) developing sensitivity to physical contact in their judgments about the acceptability of behaving in relation to owned objects and body parts. Experiment 2 used a simpler design to investigate this in 3- and 4-year-olds (N=112). Findings confirmed two predictions of the theory. First, in both experiments, children's judgments about ownership and body rights were similarly affected by physical contact. Second, judgments about both kinds of rights were yoked in development; age-related changes in judgments about ownership rights were paralleled by changes in judgments about body rights. Our findings have additional import for theories of ownership rights because they suggest that physical contact may be a crucial factor in whether behaviors targeting property are judged to be permissible.

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When responding to ownership violations, children can focus on the victim's needs, the perpetrator's punishment, or both. Recent studies show that 3- and 5-year-olds are equally likely to respond to second- and third-party violations, and 3-year-olds return objects to their rightful owners. Children's interventions are consistent with justice for victims.

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Humans are extraordinarily prosocial, and research conducted primarily in North America indicates that giving to others is emotionally rewarding. To examine whether the hedonic benefits of giving represent a universal feature of human behavior, we extended upon previous cross-cultural examinations by investigating whether inhabitants of a small-scale, rural, and isolated village in Vanuatu, where villagers have little influence from urban, Western culture, survive on subsistence farming without electricity, and have minimal formal education, report or display emotional rewards from engaging in prosocial (vs. personally beneficial) behavior. In Study 1, adults were randomly assigned to purchase candy for either themselves or others and then reported their positive affect. Consistent with previous research, adults purchasing goods for others reported greater positive emotion than adults receiving resources for themselves. In Study 2, 2- to 5-year-old children received candy and were subsequently asked to engage in costly giving (sharing their own candy with a puppet) and non-costly giving (sharing the experimenter's candy with a puppet). Emotional expressions were video-recorded during the experiment and later coded for happiness. Consistent with previous research conducted in Canada, children displayed more happiness when giving treats away than when receiving treats themselves. Moreover, the emotional rewards of giving were largest when children engaged in costly (vs. non-costly) giving. Taken together, these findings indicate that the emotional rewards of giving are detectable in people living in diverse societies and support the possibility that the hedonic benefits of generosity are universal.

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Understanding ownership rights is necessary for socially appropriate behavior. We provide evidence that preschoolers' and adults' judgments of ownership rights are related to their judgments of bodily rights. Four-year-olds (n = 70) and adults (n = 89) evaluated the acceptability of harmless actions targeting owned property and body parts. At both ages, evaluations did not vary for owned property or body parts. Instead, evaluations were influenced by two other manipulations-whether the target belonged to the agent or another person, and whether that other person approved of the action. Moreover, these manipulations influenced judgments for owned objects and body parts in the same way: When the other person approved of the action, participants' judgments were positive regardless of who the target belonged to. In contrast, when that person disapproved, judgments depended on who the target belonged to. These findings show that young children grasp the importance of approval or consent for ownership rights and bodily rights, and likewise suggest that people's notions of ownership rights are related to their appreciation of bodily rights.

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Young children are frequently exposed to fantastic fiction. How do they make sense of the unrealistic and impossible events that occur in such fiction? Although children could view such events as isolated episodes, the present experiments suggest that children use such events to infer general fantasy rules. In 2 experiments, 2- to 4-year-olds were shown scenarios in which 2 animals behaved unrealistically (N = 78 in Experiment 1, N = 94 in Experiment 2). When asked to predict how other animals in the fiction would behave, children predicted novel behaviors consistent with the nature of the fiction. These findings suggest that preschoolers can infer the general rules that govern the events and entities in fantastic fiction and can use these rules to predict what events will happen in the fiction. The findings also provide evidence that children may infer fantasy rules at a more superordinate level than the basic level.

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It is impossible to perceive who owns an object; this must be inferred. One way that children make such inferences is through a first possession bias--when two agents each use an object, children judge the object belongs to the one who used it first. Two experiments show that this bias does not result from children directly inferring ownership from first possession; the experiments instead support an alternative account according to which the first possession bias reflects children's historical reasoning. In Experiment 1, eighty-five 3- to 5-year-olds only based inferences on first possession when it was informative about the past. In Experiment 2, thirty-two 5-year-olds based ownership judgments on testimony about past contact, while disregarding testimony about future contact.

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People's behavior in relation to objects depends on whether they are owned. But how do people judge whether objects are owned? We propose that people expect human-made objects (artifacts) to be more likely to be owned than naturally occurring objects (natural kinds), and we examine the development of these expectations in young children. Experiment 1 found that when shown pictures of familiar kinds of objects, 3-year-olds expected artifacts to be owned and inanimate natural kinds to be non-owned. In Experiments 2A and 2B, 3-6-year-olds likewise had different expectations about the ownership of unfamiliar artifacts and natural kinds. Children at all ages viewed unfamiliar natural kinds as non-owned, but children younger than 6 years of age only endorsed artifacts as owned at chance rates. In Experiment 3, children saw the same pictures but were also told whether objects were human-made. With this information provided, even 3-year-olds viewed unfamiliar artifacts as owned. Finally, in Experiment 4, 4- and 5-year-olds chose unfamiliar artifacts over natural kinds when judging which object in a pair belongs to a person, but not when judging which the person prefers. These experiments provide first evidence about how children judge whether objects are owned. In contrast to claims that children think about natural kinds as being similar to artifacts, the current findings reveal that children have differing expectations about whether they are owned.

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