Oya Serbest presents poster at Cognitive Development Society conference

This year at the Cognitive Development Conference in Pasadena, Oya presented a poster titled “Children expect atheists to be more likely to violate moral and conventional norms.” In this study, the researchers introduced 3-13-year-old American children to characters with conflicting religious beliefs (theist vs. atheist) and asked which child was more likely to have violated a social norm (moral or conventional norm). The results suggested that children (across all ages and religious backgrounds) have an overall expectation that atheists are more likely to violate norms than theists. On the other hand, children’s norm violation expectation from atheists increased with age. Also, children from more religious families backgrounds expected more norm violation from atheists. This work suggests that children might have robust and early emerging expectations that theists are more likely to follow social norms.