Chapter 36: Developing an Understanding of Normativity

The authors define normativity through key features including standards of correctness, agent-independent generality, context-relativity, and normative force, which distinguishes binding social obligations from mere physical coercion. A significant portion of the text focuses on methodology, arguing that spontaneous third-party norm enforcement—where an unaffected observer protests a violation—is the most reliable indicator that a child understands the binding nature of a rule rather than simply imitating behavior. Experimental evidence demonstrates that by age three, children actively enforce conventional norms, such as the constitutive rules of games, while demonstrating an understanding that these rules are often context-dependent and distinct from moral norms, which are viewed as non-arbitrary and wider in scope. The chapter introduces the concept of promiscuous normativity, a learning mechanism where young children swiftly infer generalizable social rules from single intentional actions, even in the absence of explicit pedagogical instruction. Furthermore, the text examines the ontology of social facts, explaining how children come to understand that norms are created through collective agreement and shared intentionality, a cognitive capacity that appears to be uniquely human and absent in other primates. The discussion also covers the relationship between normativity and language, specifically how children distinguish the differing directions of fit between assertions and imperatives, and concludes by positing that human norm psychology co-evolved with the capacity for shared cooperative activities.