Context and quantitative dimension of social conventional transgressions: Is it more serious at home or at school?

The aim of this experiment was to know whether the same transgressions were judged of different seriousness depending on their context of occurrence, and whether subjects’ judgements varied according to age. Sixty subjects participated in the experiment, 20 4-year-olds, 20 8-year-olds, and 20 adults. Four cases of transgression of social conventional rules were examined. Each transgression occurred in four contexts. Subjects compared the contexts of each transgression in pairs in all combinations. For each age group, data were analyzed by means of Kruskal’s scaling in order to rank the contexts of each transgression, and by means of correspondence analysis to relate transgressions and contexts with each other. Results show that children of both ages are quite consistent in their ranking of contexts. They differ from adults who, instead, consider transgressions to be more context-specific. Results are discussed for their theoretical value and in relation to the concept of context.