Abstract: Our ordinary intuitions about human behavior include the idea that actions can have multiple motivations. Eating a meal with family, for example, satisfies hunger (physical/biological motive), desire for delicious food (psychological motive), and the obligation to participate in a communal ritual (social motive). How do children learn which is the “best” explanation for any single act? In this talk I’ll argue that the same principles that guide children’s causal learning about actions help them decide which explanations are most likely in any given case, focusing on the tension between two “levels” of explanation - the personal and the social. I’ll then show how considering trade-offs between personal and social motives guides children’s social evaluations, and speculate on how we as teachers contribute to creating explanatory biases that guide children’s reasoning in ambiguous cases.

Email us at ihd@berkeley.edu to be added to our mailing list