Children encounter moral norms in several different social contexts. Often it is in hierarchically structured interactions with parents or other adults, but sometimes it is in more symmetrically structured interactions with peers. Our question was whether children’s discussions of moral norms differ in these two contexts. Consequently, we had 4- and 6-year-old children (N = 72) reason about moral dilemmas with their mothers or peers. Both age groups opposed their partner’s views and explicitly justified their own views more often with peers than with mothers. Mothers adapted their discussions to the cognitive levels of their children (e.g., focused more on the abstract moral norms with 6-year-old children than with 4-year-old children), but almost always with a pedagogical intent. Our results suggest that with mothers, moral judgments are experienced mostly as non-negotiable dictums, but with coequal peers they are experienced more as personal beliefs that can be actively negotiated.

To navigate their social world, children have to learn the norms that govern their social groups. Piaget (1932) proposed two fundamentally different but equally important contexts in which moral development takes place: children’s interactions with their adult caregivers and with their same-age peers. In adult–child interactions, due to the hierarchical structure of the relationship, the child often acts as the recipient of knowledge: The adult provides the child with knowledge of social and moral norms, and the child often accepts this without questioning. In peer interactions, however, both participants are often equally knowledgeable and have equally valid perspectives, so which perspective is better must be negotiated. Thus, in their interactions with adults, children usually tend to conform, whereas in peer interactions there is more joint decision making guided by cooperative reasoning (Tomasello, 2019).

Research has shown...