Children as young as three show a strong level of concern for others and an intuitive sense of restorative justice, according to a new study by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany) and the University of Manchester (UK).
The findings show that young children prefer to return lost items to their rightful owners, and if for some reason that is not an option, they will typically prevent a third party from taking what does not belong to them.
Furthermore, both three- and five-year-old children are just as likely to respond to the needs of another individual — even when that individual is a puppet — as they are to their own. The findings offer new insight into the nature of justice itself, the researchers say.
“The chief implication is that a concern for others — empathy, for example — is a core component of a sense of justice,” says Keith Jensen of the University of Manchester. “This sense of justice based on harm to victims is likely to be central to human prosociality as well as punishment, both of which form the basis of uniquely human cooperation.”
[For more of this story, written by Traci Pedersen, go to http://psychcentral.com/news/2...injustice/85913.html]
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