Topic
Subfield of psychology that studies how humans change from infancy through adulthood, including how children develop social, moral, and cognitive abilities.
University of Oslo researchers found about 65% of preschool boys chose a cartoon character from the larger of two groups, against 43% of girls. In white US adults, a similar choice tracked acceptance of group dominance, though only weakly.
Reality
Babies aged 4 to 6 months looked longer at a saliva-sharing partner when the other showed distress, in two UC Santa Barbara-led experiments. The finding reaches babies who have had little time to watch anyone kiss or share food.
Reality
Henriette Zeidler's team tested 336 children aged 4 to 9 in six societies and found peer helping in every one, most often when help was truly needed. Their PNAS paper extends to peers a field that has mostly studied children helping adults, often within the family.
Reality
Four studies by Fan Yang and Yilin Liu, published in Psychological Science, find that whether a creation is kept or destroyed changes what children and adults will do to make it, and that fun only partly makes up the difference.
Reality
A study of 122 children in Poland and the US found that identical consequences satisfied almost everyone, while unequal ones provoked near-unanimous objection. Severity barely registered.
Reality