Self-presentation
in childhood:
Managing public identity after rule violation
2007-2009
Children's own
experiences of breaking rules
Background
- Research
has previously shown that in everyday life, other people usually
respond to moral rule-breaking (e.g. theft and violence) by focusing on
the victim, and to social-conventional rule-breaking (e.g. wearing
pyjamas to go shopping, boys playing with Barbie dolls) by focusing on
the rule-breaker.
- In this study, we wanted to ask children about their own
experiences of rule-breaking. We predicted that the rule
violations that lead to a focus of attention on the self (such as being
stared at or being ridiculed) would be different from the rule
violations that lead to a focus of attention on others (such as
upsetting others or needing to apologise to others).
- We chose to work with seven- to
ten-year-olds for
this study as we felt that they would be able to provide a wider range
of examples from their own experience than younger children.
Key Research
Questions
- Do children at this age
discriminate between moral
and social-conventional rule-breaking in terms of the type of outcome
they produce?
- Will children show distinctive concerns
about what other
children might think about them when social-conventional rules are
broken?
Method
- We spoke to 80 children in
total: 40 seven- to
eight-year-olds (20 female) and 40 nine- to ten-year-olds (23 female).
Children
were asked:
Can you think of a time when you did
something that…
• … made other
children stare at you?
• ... made other
children make fun of you?
• ... made another
child upset?
• ... meant you had
to say sorry to another child?
- If children could not think of
an actual situation in
which the outcome had happened, they were asked to imagine when it
could happen.
For
each example they gave, children were asked:
• What do you think
the other children thought/would
think about it?
Results
- There was a clear difference in
the type of events
children described, according to whether the outcome was one which
focused attention on the self (being stared at or made fun of) or one
which focused attention on others (upsetting another child or needing
to apologise to another child).
- Children said the
‘self-focused’ outcomes were more likely to result from actions
which made them stand out from the crowd, such as a boy playing with girls' toys, or giving a silly answer in class. These are
violations of social norms and conventions.
- In contrast, children said
the 'other-focused' outcomes were more likely
to result from actions which violated someone else’s rights, such as
hitting them, calling them names, or being nasty to them. These
are violations of moral rules.
- Children felt the audience
would think negatively of them following all rule violations, but being
evaluated as 'silly' was common only for the rule violations that led
to 'self-focused' outcomes.
Conclusions
- The study showed that
self-focused attention was most strongly linked to violations of social
norms or conventions, where the child’s behaviour makes them stand out
from
the crowd.
- Children believed that all rule
violations would lead to negative social evaluation, but concerns about looking silly were present mainly for the rule
violations that provoked self-focused attention.