Age-related changes in information-seeking behavior about morally relevant events.

With age, people increasingly emphasize intent when judging transgressions. However, people often lack information about intent in everyday settings; further, they may wonder about reasons underlying pro-social acts. Three studies investigated 4-to-6-year-olds', 7-to-9-year-olds', and adults' (data collected 2020-2022 in the northeastern United States, total n = 669, ~50% female, predominantly White) desire for information about why behaviors occurred.

Not all punishment is equal: The effect of punishment severity on children's social evaluations.

Punishment is a key mechanism to regulate selfish behaviors and maintain cooperation in a society. However, children often show mixed evaluations about third-party punishment. The current work asked how punishment severity might shape children's social judgments.

Adults Show Positive Moral Evaluations of Curiosity About Religion.

Four experiments investigated the perceived virtue of curiosity about religion. Adults from the United States made moral judgments regarding targets who exhibited curiosity, possessed relevant knowledge, or lacked both curiosity and knowledge about religion and comparison topics (e.g.

Children's moral evaluations of and behaviors toward people who are curious about religion and science.

Although children exhibit curiosity regarding science, questions remain regarding how children evaluate others' curiosity and whether evaluations differ across domains that prioritize faith (e.g., religion) versus those that value questioning (e.

Google is Free: Moral Evaluations of Intergroup Curiosity.

Two experiments investigated how evaluations of intergroup curiosity differed depending on whether people placed responsibility for their learning on themselves or on outgroup members. In Study 1, participants ( = 340; 51% White-American, 49% Black-American) evaluated White actors who were curious about Black culture and placed responsibility on outgroup members to teach versus on themselves to learn. Both Black and White participants rated the latter actors as more moral, and perceptions of effort mediated this effect.