2021 Volume 69 Issue 4 Pages 396-409
The present study examined how children and young adults judge the legitimacy of community rules that restrict the range of freedom of individuals, and whether such judgments differ depending on whether the children and adults live in Japan or in England. Participants in the study were 201 children (ages 8, 11, and 13 years) and 61 young adults (average age: Japanese sample: 19.1 years; English sample: 23.7 years). The sample size at each age level for each country was approximately 33. Participants were shown 9 hypothetical community rules and told to assume that they were under discussion by a city council, and that, if the rules were adopted, those who broke the rules would be fined. They were asked to judge the legitimacy of each rule (yes/no), to give their reason for that judgment, and to rate the seriousness of a transgression of each rule and the possible benefit of each rule for the people of that city. Analysis of the data revealed that the 8-year-old children in both countries generally tended to approve of the rules, including those that regulated individual activities, and had a low level of concern about restrictions to individual freedom. The Japanese participants were, overall, more likely than the English ones to approve of community rules that imposed restrictions on the personal domain, focusing on the rules' perceived benefit when judging their legitimacy.
