Felix Warneken
Biographic Data
| ID | 195040 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Felix Warneken |
| GIVEN NAMES | Felix |
| FAMILY NAME | Warneken |
| SIGNATURE | WARNEKEN F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4799-2559 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 127 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Children’s Third-Party Punishment Reveals a Genuine Concern for Fairness and Justice
Why do people punish wrongdoers when they are not personally affected? Researchers on costly third-party punishment have long debated whether such behavior reflects strategic self-interest or a moral commitment to fairness and justice. Recent developmental evidence offers important insights into this question. We argue that the origins of costly third-party punishment in early childhood are best explained by nonstrategic moral concerns. Young chi…
Children's reaction to unequal norm enforcement: The role of meta-norms in fairness judgments and emotion attributions
Children's socio-moral reasoning about vaccine-like behaviors
Framing public-health behaviors as benefiting others, rather than the self, can increase behavior uptake in adults. However, there are mixed results on the effects of such messaging in a vaccination context, and it is unclear how children reason about the social and moral implications of vaccination. In this study, we present school-aged children ( N = 60) with hypothetical vaccine-like behaviors and manipulate whether they benefit the self or ot…
Parent and community political orientation predicts children's health behaviours
Does political partisanship extend to childhood? To what degree are children, a largely non‐political population, impacted by parents’ and communities’ political orientations? We examined children's behaviours and attitudes during a politically divisive event – the COVID‐19 pandemic. Children (4‐ to 12‐year‐olds; N = 313) of liberal (vs. conservative) parents reported greater preventive COVID‐19 behaviours, such as mask wearing and physical dista…
The influence of friendship on children's fairness concerns in three societies
Prospection and delay of gratification support the development of calculated reciprocity
What makes Voldemort tick? Children's and adults' reasoning about the nature of villains
When not helping is nice: Children’s changing evaluations of helping during Covid-19
A key aspect of children's moral and social understanding involves recognizing the value of helpful behaviors. COVID-19 has complicated this process; behaviors generally considered praiseworthy were considered problematic during the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study examined whether 6- to 12-year-olds ( N = 228; residing in the United States) adapt their evaluations of helpful behavior in response to shifting norms. Specifically, we presented …
The influence of age and experience of (un)fairness on third‐party punishment in children
Third‐party punishment is an important mechanism to enforce norm‐following. However, the underlying process that explains the development of third‐party punishment is understood poorly. Here we examine to what extent age‐effects and contemporaneous experiences of receiving unfair offers influence third‐party punishment. In two studies, a total of N = 280 5‐ to 9‐year‐olds participated in a computer‐based task in which they received either fair or…
Does third-party punishment in children aim at equality
Third-party punishment has been regarded as an important mechanism to promote fairness. Although previous research has shown that children aged 6 and older punish unfair behaviors at a personal cost, it is unknown whether they actually intend to establish equality or whether equality is a mere byproduct of punishment. In this preregistered study, N = 60 five- to 9-year-olds witnessed that an agent made unfair resource allocations to a peer. Child…
Children's understanding of dominance and prestige in China and the UK
Children's evaluations of third-party responses to unfairness: Children prefer helping over punishment
Costly fairness in children is influenced by who is watching
Advantageous inequity aversion emerges relatively late in child development, yet the mechanisms explaining its late emergence are poorly understood. Here, we ask whether children begin to reject advantageous inequity, a costly form of fairness, once reputational concerns are in place. Specifically, we examine the role of peer monitoring in promoting fair behavior. In Study 1 ( N = 212 pairs; Ages 6 to 9), we test whether children are less likely …
The developmental foundations of human fairness
The psychology of cooperation: Insights from chimpanzees and children
Across all cultures, humans engage in cooperative activities that can be as simple as preparing a meal or sharing food with others and as complex as playing in an orchestra or donating to charity. Although intraspecific cooperation exists among many other animal species, only humans engage in such a wide array of cooperative interaction and participate in large‐scale cooperation that extends beyond kin and even includes strangers
Children’s reasoning about distributive and retributive justice across development
Research on distributive justice indicates that preschool-age children take issues of equity and merit into account when distributing desirable items, but that they often prefer to see desirable items allocated equally in third-party tasks. By contrast, less is known about the development of retributive justice. In a study with 4- to 10-year-old children (n = 123) and adults (n = 93), we directly compared the development of reasoning about distri…
Costly third-party punishment in young children
The ontogeny of fairness in seven societies
Parental Presence and Encouragement Do Not Influence Helping in Young Children
Young children begin helping others with simple instrumental problems from soon after their first birthdays. In previous observations of this phenomenon, both naturalistic and experimental, children’s parents were in the room and could potentially have influenced their behavior. In the two current studies, we gave 24‐month‐old children the opportunity to help an unfamiliar adult obtain an out‐of‐reach object when the parent (or a friendly female …
The Development of Altruistic Behavior: Helping in Children and Chimpanzees
(Article begins on next page) The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Citation Warneken, Felix. 2013. The development of altruistic behavior:helping in children and chimpanzees. Social Research 80 (2):431
Digging deeper: A response to commentaries on The roots of human altruism
The current response discusses the insightful commentaries by Dale Hay (2009) and Karen Wynn (2009) on the proposal that human altruism has deep roots both in phylogeny and ontogeny ( Warneken & Tomasello, 2009 ). In particular, I focus on (a) what observational and experimental methods can reveal about altruistic motivations in children, (b) Wynn's idea that early altruism might confer a selective advantage to the infants themselves, and (c) how…
The roots of human altruism
Human infants as young as 14 to 18 months of age help others attain their goals, for example, by helping them to fetch out-of-reach objects or opening cabinets for them. They do this irrespective of any reward from adults (indeed external rewards undermine the tendency), and very likely with no concern for such things as reciprocation and reputation, which serve to maintain altruism in older children and adults. Humans' nearest primate relatives,…
Perspectives on de Waal’s Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved
The sources of normativity: Young children's awareness of the normative structure of games
In two studies, the authors investigated 2- and 3-year-old children's awareness of the normative structure of conventional games. In the target conditions, an experimenter showed a child how to play a simple rule game. After the child and the experimenter had played for a while, a puppet came (controlled by a 2nd experimenter), asked to join in, and then performed an action that constituted a mistake in the game. In control conditions, the puppet…
Extrinsic rewards undermine altruistic tendencies in 20-month-olds
The current study investigated the influence of rewards on very young children's helping behavior. After 20-month-old infants received a material reward during a treatment phase, they subsequently were less likely to engage in further helping during a test phase as compared with infants who had previously received social praise or no reward at all. This so-called overjustification effect suggests that even the earliest helping behaviors of young …
The sources of normativity: Young children's awareness of the normative structure of games
In two studies, the authors investigated 2- and 3-year-old children's awareness of the normative structure of conventional games. In the target conditions, an experimenter showed a child how to play a simple rule game. After the child and the experimenter had played for a while, a puppet came (controlled by a 2nd experimenter), asked to join in, and then performed an action that constituted a mistake in the game. In control conditions, the puppet…
Extrinsic rewards undermine altruistic tendencies in 20-month-olds
The current study investigated the influence of rewards on very young children's helping behavior. After 20-month-old infants received a material reward during a treatment phase, they subsequently were less likely to engage in further helping during a test phase as compared with infants who had previously received social praise or no reward at all. This so-called overjustification effect suggests that even the earliest helping behaviors of young …
The roots of human altruism
Human infants as young as 14 to 18 months of age help others attain their goals, for example, by helping them to fetch out-of-reach objects or opening cabinets for them. They do this irrespective of any reward from adults (indeed external rewards undermine the tendency), and very likely with no concern for such things as reciprocation and reputation, which serve to maintain altruism in older children and adults. Humans' nearest primate relatives,…
Children’s reasoning about distributive and retributive justice across development
Research on distributive justice indicates that preschool-age children take issues of equity and merit into account when distributing desirable items, but that they often prefer to see desirable items allocated equally in third-party tasks. By contrast, less is known about the development of retributive justice. In a study with 4- to 10-year-old children (n = 123) and adults (n = 93), we directly compared the development of reasoning about distri…
The developmental foundations of human fairness
Costly fairness in children is influenced by who is watching
Advantageous inequity aversion emerges relatively late in child development, yet the mechanisms explaining its late emergence are poorly understood. Here, we ask whether children begin to reject advantageous inequity, a costly form of fairness, once reputational concerns are in place. Specifically, we examine the role of peer monitoring in promoting fair behavior. In Study 1 ( N = 212 pairs; Ages 6 to 9), we test whether children are less likely …
When not helping is nice: Children’s changing evaluations of helping during Covid-19
A key aspect of children's moral and social understanding involves recognizing the value of helpful behaviors. COVID-19 has complicated this process; behaviors generally considered praiseworthy were considered problematic during the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study examined whether 6- to 12-year-olds ( N = 228; residing in the United States) adapt their evaluations of helpful behavior in response to shifting norms. Specifically, we presented …
Children's socio-moral reasoning about vaccine-like behaviors
Framing public-health behaviors as benefiting others, rather than the self, can increase behavior uptake in adults. However, there are mixed results on the effects of such messaging in a vaccination context, and it is unclear how children reason about the social and moral implications of vaccination. In this study, we present school-aged children ( N = 60) with hypothetical vaccine-like behaviors and manipulate whether they benefit the self or ot…
The Development of Altruistic Behavior: Helping in Children and Chimpanzees
(Article begins on next page) The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Citation Warneken, Felix. 2013. The development of altruistic behavior:helping in children and chimpanzees. Social Research 80 (2):431
Cooperative Activities in Young Children and Chimpanzees
Human children 18–24 months of age and 3 young chimpanzees interacted in 4 cooperative activities with a human adult partner. The human children successfully participated in cooperative problem-solving activities and social games, whereas the chimpanzees were uninterested in the social games. As an experimental manipulation, in each task the adult partner stopped participating at a specific point during the activity. All children produced at leas…
Helping and Cooperation at 14 Months of Age
Two experiments investigated the proclivity of 14‐month‐old infants (a) to altruistically help others toward individual goals, and (b) to cooperate toward a shared goal. The infants helped another person by handing over objects the other person was unsuccessfully reaching for, but did not help reliably in situations involving more complex goals. When a programmed adult partner interrupted a joint cooperative activity at specific moments, infants …
Perspectives on de Waal’s Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved
The sources of normativity: Young children's awareness of the normative structure of games
In two studies, the authors investigated 2- and 3-year-old children's awareness of the normative structure of conventional games. In the target conditions, an experimenter showed a child how to play a simple rule game. After the child and the experimenter had played for a while, a puppet came (controlled by a 2nd experimenter), asked to join in, and then performed an action that constituted a mistake in the game. In control conditions, the puppet…
Extrinsic rewards undermine altruistic tendencies in 20-month-olds
The current study investigated the influence of rewards on very young children's helping behavior. After 20-month-old infants received a material reward during a treatment phase, they subsequently were less likely to engage in further helping during a test phase as compared with infants who had previously received social praise or no reward at all. This so-called overjustification effect suggests that even the earliest helping behaviors of young …
Digging deeper: A response to commentaries on The roots of human altruism
The current response discusses the insightful commentaries by Dale Hay (2009) and Karen Wynn (2009) on the proposal that human altruism has deep roots both in phylogeny and ontogeny ( Warneken & Tomasello, 2009 ). In particular, I focus on (a) what observational and experimental methods can reveal about altruistic motivations in children, (b) Wynn's idea that early altruism might confer a selective advantage to the infants themselves, and (c) how…
The roots of human altruism
Human infants as young as 14 to 18 months of age help others attain their goals, for example, by helping them to fetch out-of-reach objects or opening cabinets for them. They do this irrespective of any reward from adults (indeed external rewards undermine the tendency), and very likely with no concern for such things as reciprocation and reputation, which serve to maintain altruism in older children and adults. Humans' nearest primate relatives,…
Parental Presence and Encouragement Do Not Influence Helping in Young Children
Young children begin helping others with simple instrumental problems from soon after their first birthdays. In previous observations of this phenomenon, both naturalistic and experimental, children’s parents were in the room and could potentially have influenced their behavior. In the two current studies, we gave 24‐month‐old children the opportunity to help an unfamiliar adult obtain an out‐of‐reach object when the parent (or a friendly female …
The Development of Altruistic Behavior: Helping in Children and Chimpanzees
(Article begins on next page) The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Citation Warneken, Felix. 2013. The development of altruistic behavior:helping in children and chimpanzees. Social Research 80 (2):431
Costly third-party punishment in young children
The ontogeny of fairness in seven societies
The psychology of cooperation: Insights from chimpanzees and children
Across all cultures, humans engage in cooperative activities that can be as simple as preparing a meal or sharing food with others and as complex as playing in an orchestra or donating to charity. Although intraspecific cooperation exists among many other animal species, only humans engage in such a wide array of cooperative interaction and participate in large‐scale cooperation that extends beyond kin and even includes strangers
Children’s reasoning about distributive and retributive justice across development
Research on distributive justice indicates that preschool-age children take issues of equity and merit into account when distributing desirable items, but that they often prefer to see desirable items allocated equally in third-party tasks. By contrast, less is known about the development of retributive justice. In a study with 4- to 10-year-old children (n = 123) and adults (n = 93), we directly compared the development of reasoning about distri…
The developmental foundations of human fairness
Children's understanding of dominance and prestige in China and the UK
Children's evaluations of third-party responses to unfairness: Children prefer helping over punishment
Costly fairness in children is influenced by who is watching
Advantageous inequity aversion emerges relatively late in child development, yet the mechanisms explaining its late emergence are poorly understood. Here, we ask whether children begin to reject advantageous inequity, a costly form of fairness, once reputational concerns are in place. Specifically, we examine the role of peer monitoring in promoting fair behavior. In Study 1 ( N = 212 pairs; Ages 6 to 9), we test whether children are less likely …
The influence of age and experience of (un)fairness on third‐party punishment in children
Third‐party punishment is an important mechanism to enforce norm‐following. However, the underlying process that explains the development of third‐party punishment is understood poorly. Here we examine to what extent age‐effects and contemporaneous experiences of receiving unfair offers influence third‐party punishment. In two studies, a total of N = 280 5‐ to 9‐year‐olds participated in a computer‐based task in which they received either fair or…
Does third-party punishment in children aim at equality
Third-party punishment has been regarded as an important mechanism to promote fairness. Although previous research has shown that children aged 6 and older punish unfair behaviors at a personal cost, it is unknown whether they actually intend to establish equality or whether equality is a mere byproduct of punishment. In this preregistered study, N = 60 five- to 9-year-olds witnessed that an agent made unfair resource allocations to a peer. Child…
The influence of friendship on children's fairness concerns in three societies
Prospection and delay of gratification support the development of calculated reciprocity
What makes Voldemort tick? Children's and adults' reasoning about the nature of villains
When not helping is nice: Children’s changing evaluations of helping during Covid-19
A key aspect of children's moral and social understanding involves recognizing the value of helpful behaviors. COVID-19 has complicated this process; behaviors generally considered praiseworthy were considered problematic during the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study examined whether 6- to 12-year-olds ( N = 228; residing in the United States) adapt their evaluations of helpful behavior in response to shifting norms. Specifically, we presented …
Parent and community political orientation predicts children's health behaviours
Does political partisanship extend to childhood? To what degree are children, a largely non‐political population, impacted by parents’ and communities’ political orientations? We examined children's behaviours and attitudes during a politically divisive event – the COVID‐19 pandemic. Children (4‐ to 12‐year‐olds; N = 313) of liberal (vs. conservative) parents reported greater preventive COVID‐19 behaviours, such as mask wearing and physical dista…
Children's reaction to unequal norm enforcement: The role of meta-norms in fairness judgments and emotion attributions
Psychology (25 works) · Social Psychology (23 works) · Developmental psychology (22 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (16 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (12 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Law (6 works)