Even small children recognise lame excuses
A promise is a promise! Every child knows that. Three-year-olds can even tell the difference between someone coming up with a good or a bad excuse.
If parents promise something and then don't keep it, they should give a good reason: Children as young as three years old can recognise a lame excuse. This is the conclusion reached by researchers from Duke University led by psychologist Michael Tomasello and his doctoral student Leon Li after an experiment with 64 children aged three or five years.
As the group describes in the scientific journal "Cognitive Development", they showed the boys and girls a series of videos: In them, dolls promised to fetch a great toy, but came back empty-handed. Sometimes they gave no explanation at all, sometimes they gave a good reason such as "I had to help my friend with his homework", sometimes a bad one such as "I wanted to watch TV".
Whatever the explanation, the children did not think it was okay that they had broken their promise. However, they were more understanding if there was a good reason, such as helping someone else with something. A poor excuse, such as a selfish reason, was no better for the children than no explanation at all. They were aware of the social norm that altruistic reasons count more than selfish motives. The five-year-olds were even able to explain this when asked, whereas the three-year-olds were not.
The lazy excuses have no consequences
However, the children apparently did not draw any conclusions. With both good and bad excuses, they liked the dolls just as much and wanted to play with them just as much. "When someone breaks a promise and gives a flimsy reason, it usually indicates that they are not a really good friend," says Li in a press release. The children apparently did not see this connection. Reassuring for parents who don't always keep their word: At least in this experiment, the relationship didn't suffer from a lazy excuse.
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Cover photo: Shutterstock, Krakenimages.com / Even a child should not be given a bad excuse.
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