The cost of a violation: How children and adults determine the severity of social violations

Social evaluations vary in severity, yet it remains unclear what determines these graded judgments. The same action can seem relatively minor in one context, but deeply objectionable in another. One possibility is that observers use a unifying utility framework to reason about costs imposed on the person affected. Across four preregistered experiments, we tested this possibility using ownership violations. Three- to 8-year-olds (N = 336) and adults (N = 336) evaluated scenarios that manipulated action severity, ownership status, resource scarcity, and subjective value while holding other aspects of the transgression constant. Across experiments, children showed adult-like patterns of evaluation, judging violations more negatively when they imposed greater objective or subjective costs on owners. These findings suggest that, even early in development, observers jointly consider whether an action violates a social norm and how it affects the person’s utility when determining the severity of social violations, in line with existing frameworks.