´I don´t want to play with you´: Young children´s use of social exclusion

Ostracism, or being ignored and excluded by others, is part of our daily lives. It has been documented across historical time and diverse cultural contexts and is reported with striking regularity when people are asked to describe their social relationships. One reason for this is that ostracism plays a key role in maintaining cooperative behaviour within the group: individuals actively avoid interacting with known cheaters. Ostracism is not always so easily justified however; at times, it is used as a way to isolate individuals who are perceived to be different from the majority.

The experiments in this grant will investigate the roots of this complex social phenomenon in development. Drawing on previously disparate literatures in social, developmental and evolutionary psychology, the work will examine the situations under which young children (aged 3 – 8) exclude others from their interactions. The cross cultural component of the project will test which aspects of children’s social decision making may be culturally invariant and which vary depending on the community children grow up in.