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Many people strongly believe that children, no matter the age or level of maturity, should not be left unsupervised by their parents. Consequences include legal charges and a series of backlash by other members of the community. However, are people's responses to a story about a mother who left her five-year-old child alone due to rational thinking or a moral whim? Cognitive psychologist Barbara Sarnecka conducts a study to investigate.
With over one thousand participants, the findings of the experiment suggests that in deciding which different scenerios of a child left unattended caused the most risk, the reason the adult left was the most influential aspect. Take note, this is regardless of whether or not the risk of leaving a child unattended is the same! In other words, people determine how "wrong" a behavior is on why the parent left the child unsupervised. More specifically, participants rated that a child is in higher risk of endangerment when the mother left him alone to meet a lover compared to if she left him unintentionally, even if the rest of the scenerios is completely the same.
Thus, Sarnecka concluded from her study that our judgments are heavily influenced by our moral attitudes, not necessarily based only on rational thinking. It is also important to note that moral attitudes varies across different cultures. For example, many Japanese children are able to use public transport and run errands without an adult, yet in an American context, this scenerio would be heavily criticized. Sarnecka and her research team continues to look at whether or not results will differ according to different respondent groups.
Source material from Scientific American