“Everyone needs to be treated the same”: Children’s Thinking about Rights

Using cognitive domain theory, this talk will discuss two studies examining children’s reasoning about rights. In study one, 63 (9, 11-, and 13-year-olds) mixed-race South African children and their mothers responded to hypothetical vignettes in which children’s nurturance and self-determination rights conflicted with parental authority in the home.  Participants were required to decide whether they should support the story characters’ right and provide a justification for their response.  Findings indicated that both children and mothers were more likely to endorse children’s nurturance than self-determination rights.  In terms of reasoning, both children’s and mothers’ responses revealed distinct patterns of thinking influenced by the type of right under consideration.  The second study focused on British young people’s understanding of the rights of asylum-seeking young people. Two hundred sixty participants (11 to 24 years) were read vignettes involving asylum-seeking young people’s religious and non-religious self-determination and nurturance rights.  Religious rights were more likely to be endorsed than non-religious rights.  In general, younger participants were more likely than older participants to endorse the rights of asylum-seeking young people.  Supporting a social cognitive domain approach, patterns of reasoning varied with the type of right and whether scenarios involved religious or non-religious issues.