Young children's creation and transmission of social norms

•5-Year-olds can create their own arbitrary social norms.•This norm creation by children occurs without normative input from an authority.•These social norms are transmitted to other children using generic normative language.•Children thereby show a deeper normative understanding than previously thought.

Children's lives are governed by social norms. Since Piaget, however, it has been assumed that they understand very little about how norms work. Recent studies in which children enforce social norms indicate a richer understanding, but children are still relating to pre-existing adult norms. In this study, triads of 5-year-olds worked on an instrumental task without adult guidance. Children spontaneously created social norms regarding how the game “should” be played. They transmitted these with special force (using more generic and objective language) to novices, suggesting that young children understand to some degree, the conventional nature and special force of social norms in binding all who would participate.