Young children think you can opt out of social-conventional but not moral practices

Social-conventional but not moral norms bring with them the possibility of “opting-out” of the practice in question. The current study investigated preschoolers' understanding of this special form of context-relativity: the norms' validity upon the agent's intention to engage in the respective activity. Forty-eight 3-year-olds saw a (puppet) agent act in accordance with or against a conventional or moral rule after announcing either to be part or to opt out of the activity. Children's normative responses indicated a sophisticated understanding of the possibility to opt out of the norm-regulated activity. When confronted with a moral situation, children judged a norm-violating behavior independently of the agent's announcement to be or not be part of the activity. In the social-conventional context, however, children judged the agent's actions against the standards of her intention, protesting a norm violation less after the announcement to opt out of the activity.