Becoming status conscious

This paper explores the cognitive developments underlying conventionalized social phenomena such as language and ownership. What do children make of the claims that, ‘This is mine’ or ‘That is called “water”?’ Understanding these features of social reality involves appreciating status as a system of normative prescriptions. Research on children's theories of intentional agency suggests important constraints on the development of status systems. Key insights are that prescriptions affect behavior only via representations, and that the norms involved in prescriptions are distinct from statements of preferences. When do children appreciate the normative structure of social facts, and what kinds of experiences might advance their understanding?

Acknowledgements

Preparation of this paper was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01 HD37520). Thanks to Jan Bransen for comments and helpful suggestions.

Notes

1. By this I do not mean that infants must have a self-conscious appreciation of objective truth. They may lack any conceptions of bases or origins of facts. To the extent babies, and non-human animals, fail to recognize the role of intentions in the establishment of conventions and status, I will say they live in a world of brute facts. We might alternatively state that such creatures appreciate neither brute nor institutional facts. It seems plausible that the appreciation of one depends, to some degree, on contrast with the other. Rather than characterizing development as the emergence of institutional understanding from brute, the process could be characterized as a differentiation. Both the idea of subjectivity and of objectivity are developmental achievements. I thank Jan Bransen for posing this formulation. The specific point about infants is that they cannot interact with institutional facts as well as not understand the basis. A preschooler can respond to the value of a coin, a baby cannot.

2. Smith (2001) points out a potential problem for this account. What counts as murder or theft may be observer-relative. In this case would a brute fact depend on an institutional one? Shweder (1990) also discusses the question of universal evaluations applied to variable distinctions.

3. Beyond changes in status. One does not need to be caught in order to be a rule violator, to change in status from rule-follower to rule-breaker. The further consequences of rule-violation do, though, require an observer.

4. As opposed to ‘I'll keep you from taking it’ or ‘you will get sick if you take it.’ The former is not observer-dependent, and the latter is observer-dependent only in the heeding of the warning, not its consequences.