The perpetuation of ritualistic actions as revealed by young children's transmission of normative behavior

Abstract Children will comprehensively copy others' actions despite manifest perceptual cues to their causal ineffectiveness. In experiment 1 we demonstrate that children will overimitate in this way even when the arbitrary actions copied are used as part of a process to achieve an outcome for...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Evolution and human behavior 2015-05, Vol.36 (3), p.191-198
Main Authors: Nielsen, Mark, Kapitány, Rohan, Elkins, Rosemary
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Action
Children
Cultural transmission
Normative behavior
Overimitation
Psychiatry
Ritual
Social learning
Values
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Summary:Abstract Children will comprehensively copy others' actions despite manifest perceptual cues to their causal ineffectiveness. In experiment 1 we demonstrate that children will overimitate in this way even when the arbitrary actions copied are used as part of a process to achieve an outcome for someone else. We subsequently show in experiment 2 that children will omit arbitrary actions, but only if the actions are to achieve a clear, functional goal for a naïve adult. These findings highlight how readily children adopt what appear to be conventional behaviors, even when faced with a clear demonstration of their negligible functional value. We show how a child's strong, early-emerging propensity for overimitation reveals a sensitivity for ritualistic behavior.
ISSN:1090-5138
1879-0607
DOI:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.11.002