2007-2009

• In our previous study we looked at four- to eight-year-old children's reasoning about how doing or saying certain things can make somebody else think about them in a particular way. We asked them to think about this in the context of breaking two types of rules: moral (e.g., theft and violence) and social-conventional (behaviour that is not 'normal', e.g., wearing swimming trunks to school).
• We found that children as young as four showed some attention to social emotions (feelings that imply a concern with how they are seen by others, e.g. embarrassment) and concerns about social evaluation (what other children would think about them). Both of these increased between the ages of four and eight.
• BUT we also found that from Year 1 onward, both of these things were seen primarily when social-conventional rules were broken, suggesting that this type of situation is particularly important in children's learning about how to manage their public image.
• We argue that this may be due to the different responses these acts provoke: responses to moral rule-breaking usually focus on the victim, while responses to social-conventional rule-breaking focus on the rule-breaker, e.g., laughing at them.
• In this study we investigated self-focused attention as an important psychological mechanism that draws children's attention to their public self-image.

• Will children show more social emotions and concerns about social evaluations when self-focused attention is heightened?
• Will manipulating self-focused attention produce similar results for both types of rule-breaking?

• We spoke to 184 children (90 female) aged between four and nine. Children heard four stories in which they were asked to imagine intentionally breaking rules. Each child heard either four moral or four social-conventional rule-breaking stories.
• The moral stories involved: hitting someone, snatching a book, stealing a pencil case, and breaking someone's jigsaw.
• The social-conventional stories involved: eating spaghetti with fingers, dyeing hair green, burping during story time, and wearing a new swimming costume to school in winter.
• To manipulate self-focused attention, the reactions of the other children in the stories to the rule-breaking act was changed. Each child's four stories either ended with the other children saying nothing, or with them saying, 'That was really naughty of you' and 'You were being really silly'.

• Children were asked:


• Would it be okay for you to do that?
• How bad would it be for you to do that? (rated from 'not at all' to 'very bad')     
• How would you feel after you did that?
• What would you do next?
• Why would you do that?
• What would you say next?
• Why would you say that?

• Children's feelings and concerns depended on the type of rule being broken, and on the reaction of the audiences in the stories.
• Notably, for stories where a moral rule was broken, children were more likely to refer to embarrassment and think about how they would be seen by others when the audience focused attention on the self than when the audience was passive.
• But in the case of social-conventional rule-breaking, references to embarrassment and concern about social evaluation were consistently more frequent.

• In the case of moral rule-breaking, children were more likely to show concerns about 'image' when the audience reacted by focusing attention on the rule-breaker (rather than staying passive).
• The audience reaction did not affect self-presentational concerns in the case of social-conventional rule-breaking. This suggests that the act of breaking a social norm is enough to provoke concerns about how you are coming across to others, regardless of any actual audience response to the act.
• By the age of four, children's previous experiences of how other people respond to rule-breaking may already have helped them learn to think and act differently after breaking different types of rules.

Background

• This study also investigates the effect of self-focused attention on the way children think about behaviour following a rule violation. However, this time we chose to manipulate the self-focused attention of the children themselves, rather than the story characters.
• Previous research suggests that self-focused attention can be induced in children during a testing session by letting them see themselves (e.g., in a mirror or on a video recording), and/or by telling them that someone else will see them. We decided to use a combination of these in our study.
• We were particularly interested in testing the hypothesis that inducing self-focused attention in children during the testing session itself would influence their emotional responses to the stories, but not their reasoning about the self-presentational motives of the story characters.

Method

• We spoke to 192 children (89 female) aged between four and nine. Children heard four stories in which they were asked to imagine intentionally breaking rules. Each child heard either four moral or four social-conventional rule-breaking stories. The stories were the same as in Study 1 above, but we did not manipulate the audience's reaction to the rule violation. In all cases, we merely reminded the children that the rule violation had been seen by the other characters in the story.
• To manipulate self-focused attention, we used a video camera. Half of the children were told that their answers were being filmed and might be picked to be shown to the rest of the class. The other half were told that the camera was broken. Please note that we did not in fact film any children. When all of the children in a class had taken part, this was explained to them, and the children's parents were provided with information about the entire procedure.
• Children were asked the same questions as in Study 1 above.

Results

• As expected, children who thought they were being filmed for their classmates and teacher to see later were equally likely to refer to social emotions (such as embarrassment) following moral rule violations and social-conventional rule violations. But children who knew they weren't being filmed were less likely to refer to social emotions following moral rule violations.
  
• However, the video camera had no effect on children's reasoning about self-presentational motives. Regardless of the camera condition, children were more likely to think about how a rule-breaker would be seen by others following social-conventional rather than moral rule-breaking, and this effect increased with age.

Conclusions

• In line with our expectations, children's feelings depended not only on the type of rule being broken, but also on whether or not they thought they were being filmed. When being filmed, children expect that both moral rule-breakers and conventional rule-breakers will experience social emotions such as embarrassment. But under conditions where self-focused attention is low, children refer to social emotions significantly more following a conventional rule violation.
• Interestingly, the effect of the video camera did not extend to children's reasoning about self-presentational motives (e.g., not wanting to look bad in front of an audience). Children were more likely to think about self-presentational processes following a conventional rule violation rather than a moral rule violation, and this was true regardless of the video camera condition.
• Putting the two studies together, it seems that focusing children's attention on themselves can certainly play a role in making concerns about 'image' more salient for them (particularly when a moral rule has been broken), but the way in which this occurs depends on how the self-focused attention is induced.