When Should the Majority Rule? : Children's Developing Intuitions About Majority Rules Voting

Across many contexts, majority rules are used as a decision-making procedure to coordinate conflicts within groups. Despite the prevalence of majority rules procedures, it is unclear how children think about majority rules as a way to resolve group disagreements in early childhood, and how this develops across age. In 3 experiments, we explored 4- to 9-year-olds’ early intuitions about majority rules voting (N = 630) in two countries: the U.S. and China. Specifically, we compared majority rules voting to two different ways of making decisions: a randomized decision (coin flip) and abiding by a single individual’s preference. We found children preferred majority rules over letting a single individual decide by age 4, and over coin flip by age 6. We further demonstrated that children do not use majority rules indiscriminately. Instead, they clearly differentiate when majorities should make decisions: They endorse majorities when voting on behalf of groups, but not individuals, and when deciding on preference, but not on moral or truth claims. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on the development of concepts of fairness and norms