Title Following Majority Rule versus Deferring to Elders: Educational Background Shapes Group Decision Preference in Burmese Children

Author Infomation Yo Nakawake (ORCID:0000-0002-4911-0740 )123* Mark Stanford (ORCID:0000-0001-6208-8085)24*

1 of Economics and Management, Kochi of Technology 2 Center for Social Cohesion, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford 3 of Human-Environmental Studies, Kyushu University 4 The Research Center for Future Design, Kochi University of Technology *Correspondence should be addressed to Y.N. ([email protected]) or M.S. ([email protected])

Abstract Previous studies showed that most children believe majority rule is the right decision rule, and prefer it to authority rule when making group decisions among peers. Yet, these were conducted mostly in Western or similar populations. Here, we conducted experiments with fifty-one Burmese children (4 to 11 years old) at three types of educational institutions: international , a monastery school and a day-care centre for street children. In the experiment, children were asked whether they prefer majority or authority rule in a hypothetical story. The result showed the influences the proportion choosing majority rule, suggesting that preference for majority rule may not be a universal pattern and decision preference may be shaped by cultural factors.

Acknowledgement We are grateful to Mai Ngun Siang Kim for assisting with experiments. Both authors are grateful for financial support from the Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF0164), the Risona Foundation of Asia and Oceania. Y.N. acknowledges financial support provided through Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (16H06412) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Finally, we are grateful to all the children who participated in the studies, teachers and local care workers who helped us conduct experiments and the educational institutions which allowed us to conduct the experiments. Introduction Group decision making is ubiquitously found in human societies as well as animal groups. Human examples range from daily decisions, such as the choice of a restaurant for lunch, to parliamentary decisions to amend constitutions (Austen-Smith & Federeseen, 2009; Novak & Elster, 2014). Other examples include nest-site choices of eusocial insects and communal movements in mammals (Conradt & Roper, 2005; Sumpter & Pratt, 2009). While there are multiple group decision rules to aggregate individual opinions (Conradt & List, 2009), two major decision rules have been rigorously studied in decision science: to follow the opinion of the majority (the majority/plurality rule), or to follow that of the single most experienced individual (the expert/best member rule) (e.g., Arrow, 1951; Conradt & Roper, 2009; Hastie & Kameda, 2005; Hill, 1982). The primary focus in decision science and psychology has been how accurately both strategies perform in tasks with objective answers (e.g., a quiz of a certain domain of knowledge, or forecasting of future events). A series of theoretical and empirical experiments have shown that the performance of the two strategies strongly depends on the environment or the type of decision topics, and there is no single strategy that can robustly outperform others (Conradt & List, 2009; Luan et al., 2012; Nakawake & Takezawa, 2021). Despite a large empirical literature comparing performance, preference for or legitimacy of majority rule or expert rule has scarcely been examined by previous studies. Studies concerning whether people think it is right to use majority rule (or the expert member rule) are scarcely found in the empirical literature, and even in philosophical argumentation (Risse, 2004).

One exception is developmental psychology, which has investigated the legitimacy of majority rule by asking children if it is ‘right’ to use majority rule in various situations. A series of studies have shown that the majority of children consider majority rule as the right and fair decision typically in a situation where the group must make a one-shot decision. However, many of these studies only focused on majority rule and did not offer other rules as alternatives (an exception is Helwig & Kim, 1999). Thus, the present study presented the expert rule (following the opinion of the more experienced member) as an alternative to majority rule, as previous studies of social learning have found that children have a tendency to imitate not only the behaviour of the majority (copy the majority; Haun & Tomasello, 2011) but also the behaviour of a more experienced or high-status individual (e.g., head teacher, McGuigan, 2013).

Although previous studies were carried out both in Western (e.g., Switzerland, Australia, UK) and non-Western countries (Japan), these studies have been conducted exclusively with children in Western-style educational systems (Moessinger, 1981; Greenbaum et al. 1983; Mann et al.,1984; Kinoshita, 2006). Moreover, they have been limited to countries with a long-established democratic tradition, which could conceivably influence attitudes toward decision-making procedures even relatively early in development. Thus the present study was conducted in Burma, a country with scarcely any experience of democracy for nearly six decades; and with children from a variety of educational environments, ranging from Western-style international schools to a school administered by the highly hierarchical Buddhist monkhood.

Preference for majority rule in children The initial interest of research on majority group decision making was how children’s perceptions of distributive justice vary depending on whether groups consist of fixed or shifting sets of members (Greenbaum et al., 1983; Mann et al., 1984; Moessinger, 1981). These studies used a story about deciding the destination of a school trip: within a group the majority of children want to go to a mountain and a minority of children want to go to a lake, yet there is only one bus, so all children have to go together (Greenbaum et al., 1983; Mann et al., 1984; Moessinger, 1981). Children were repeatedly asked the question with a background story that each week decided the destination. Researchers argued that majority rule might be a fair decision rule when the group is shifting but not when it is fixed, because the minority must follow the decision. The studies showed that children tend to prefer majority rule if group members are shifting yet prefer an alternative decision rule if the group members are fixed. While the preferred decision rule can vary, at the first trial of preference, most children favoured majority rule. For example, in a study conducted by Mann et al. (1984), more than 92% of children favoured majority rule for the first trial across all age groups (8.0, 10.5, 12.1 and 14.0 years old). This result is consistent with recent studies of social learning which have shown that children have a strong bias to defer to the majority in a simple perception task (Corriveau & Harris, 2010; Haun & Tomasello, 2011; 3−5 years old) or a task of choosing coloured boxes to put balls in (Haun et al. 2012, 2014, 2 years old children). The literature above showed that children prefer the majority group decision rule and have a social learning bias to follow the majority. However, majority following is not the only social learning bias; the other well-known social bias is prestige bias (Henrich & Gil-White, 2010): following more prestigious members often bearing more expert knowledge, ability, or experience. A series of empirical studies have shown that children give more attention to a dominant or prestigious individual (Chudek et al., 2012) or trust an individual with expertise or relevant knowledge (Harris & Corriveau, 2011; Lane & Harris, 2015); further, a selective learning study found that children tend to learn instrumental skills from experts rather than the majority (Burdett et al., 2016). A study by Helwig & Kim (1999) extended previous studies focusing on majority decisions (Greenbaum et al., 1983; Mann et al., 1984; Moessinger, 1981) and included an authority-based rule (decision by an adult) as one of the alternatives to majority rule, while previous studies only focused on majority rule or alternative rules (not explicitly mentioning an alternative rule). Helwig & Kim (1999; 6−12 years old) considered three types of decision rules including majority rule, consensus rule and authority-based decisions (adult-authority based decisions). Helwig & Kim (1999) found that overall children prefer more autonomous rules--either majority rule or consensus decision making--but the context influences the preference. In the peer context such as choosing a game to play, most children chose a democratic rule, either the majority rule or the consensus rule. However, in the school context such as choosing a school curriculum, the majority of children chose authority-based decision making (Helwig & Kim, 1999). Thus in some cases, such as deciding the school curriculum, children do not prefer majority rule; but overall, children prefer majority rule in peer decisions.

These studies seem to show that overall, children have a strong preference for majority rule in one-shot decision making. However, there are two limitations in the previous studies that should give us pause before we conclude that children basically prefer majority rule over other procedures. Firstly, the previous studies did not explicitly compare majority rule with authority-based rule in peer situations. Most of the previous studies focused on whether it is right to choose majority rule or not (Greenbaum et al., 1983; Kinoshita, 1989; Mann et al., 1984; Moessinger, 1981), and thus did not explicitly compare several group decision rules. An exception is Helwig & Kim (1999), which included an authority-based decision rule, and showed that the majority of children chose majority rule or consensus rule rather than authority-based decision in the case of a peer decision: the selection of a game for children to play. Yet, in the case of selecting a game, the adult may not be considered to be a group member sharing the group interest. Thus the present study compared majority rule among children to the rule of adhering to the decision of the oldest child, who could still be considered as a part of the peer group, yet is also likely to be thought of as more knowledgeable or powerful compared to younger children.

Secondly, the previous studies have mostly been conducted in Western countries with English speaking regions or countries sharing the same values as these countries. Recently in psychology, there exist concerns that quite a large proportion of psychological research has been conducted in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) societies, and draws conclusions about general human psychological tendencies from WEIRD countries which cannot be representative of the general population (Henrich et al. 2010). Previous studies of majority preference included countries such as Israel or Japan (Greenbaum et al. 1983; Kinoshita, 2006), however these are developed, democratic societies, differing from WEIRD countries only in that they are non-Western, but not on any of the other dimensions.

The present study was thus carried out in Burma, a developing country with little recent experience of democracy. Burma experienced five decades of direct military rule, from 1962 until the beginning of an ostensible transition to democracy in 2010 (Kipgen, 2016). However, from 2010 to 2021, the military retained de facto control, allowing the existence of a civilian administration as a largely cosmetic measure (Bünte, 2021). In February 2021 they put an end to this dyarchic system and resumed direct control. Meanwhile, the legacy of six decades of authoritarian control has pervaded society, including educational institutions (Esson and Wang, 2018). We conducted experiments in several educational organizations differing in their connection to Western organizations and their economic situation. To minimize other cultural interactions, we recruited only from Burmese Buddhist children.

General description of field sites Monastery school: This site was a located within and operated by a Buddhist monastery in central Yangon. Because of the institutional weakness of the formal education sector, monasteries operate many schools throughout the country, catering especially to economically disadvantaged pupils (Lorch 2008). In this case, the monastery takes in orphans and children of poor families from distant Shan State. Many of them may not have Buddhist family backgrounds, but during their time at the school, they live in a Buddhist environment, where they are instructed by . Education typically follows a pattern of rote learning and respect for hierarchy within the institution of the monastery (Tin and Stenning, 2016).

International school: We collected data at two international primary schools in central Yangon. These schools cater to a mix of affluent Burmese families and the children of foreign expatriates, and pupils come from a wide variety of countries and cultures. Although we collected data only from Buddhist Burmese children at these schools, they are exposed on a daily basis to a variety of cultural influences. Not only their fellow pupils, but also their teachers, are typically foreign. Their pedagogical style is generally based more on imaginative and participative methods, and less on rote learning and hierarchy, relative to education at the monastery school. The higher socioeconomic status of the pupils is also reflected in a more affluent home environment.

Day care centre: Our final site was a day care centre in Yangon operated by a local NGO, with international volunteers. This site combined some aspects of the other two sites. As with the monastery school, the day care centre children are poor and often orphaned; the centre provides a way for children who would otherwise be occupied in rubbish-picking to spend some time in formal education. But as with the international schools, the pedagogical style of the day care centre is more influenced by international trends toward child-centred education. Moreover, unlike in the monastery, children at the day care centre do not live full-time in an institutional environment. As street children, their lives are both more precarious and less structured.

Method Participants. Fifty-one Burmese Buddhist children participated; the range of age was 4 to 11 (M = 7.3, SD = 1.72). Fifteen children participated in the day care centre (five girls, ten boys), seven children participated in the international schools (four girls, three boys) and 29 children participated in the monastery school (all boys). The consent form was translated into Burmese and given beforehand to caregivers. The research was approved by the ethics committee of Kyushu University and conducted in accordance with APA guidelines. All children participated in November 2019. For recruitment, we did not have a predetermined participant pool but recruited based on the educational institutions that allowed us to conduct experiments. Thus we could not control the age or gender or ensure an equal proportion of participants from each site. In the day-care centre and the monastery school, classes were not divided by age. In the case of the day-care centre, children of all ages received meals and education in the same room. At the monastery school, children were vaguely classified into several groups but the range of age was relatively large. Since we got permission to recruit and conduct the experiment in one of the classes, all possible children of the age group in that class could be encouraged to participate.

As for the two international schools, both were located in the diplomatic district and most students were not Burmese. Thus, the number of children recruited was relatively fewer than at the other sites.

Procedure. Upon arrival, participants had a short ice breaking conversation (e.g., “What was the last food you ate?”). After the question we administered a short interview then conducted an experiment. The interviews included the questions of gender and age reported in this paper. The questions were asked by the Burmese experimenter. We basically followed the method of Kinoshita (1989) and simply explained the situation and asked the children’s preferences. The question was: “If children are playing, and an older child comes, do you think it is better to play the game that everybody wants? Or to play the game that the older child wants?” Then children answered either “everybody” or “older”. The term “voting” or “majority (rule)” was not used since some children might not be accustomed to such concepts.

Previous studies typically used the “school trip” scenario in which a fictional group of children choose either a mountain or a lake for the destination (Greenbaum et al. 1983; Mann et al.,1984; Moessinger, 1981). For the question we chose the peer-situation of choosing a game to play. Further, we did not follow the question used in previous studies, which is strongly tuned to Western or modern educational systems. In fact, in our pilot study we asked about the “school trip” and other scenarios (e.g., Moessinger, 1981; Kinoshita, 1989), however, children were confused by items. Thus we decided to use only a playing scenario.

Analysis Plan. A generalized linear model (GLM) with binomial distribution and logistic link function (logistic regression) was applied to investigate if choice of preferred group decision rule could be predicted by educational background. As predictors, we further included age and gender as fixed effects. Since we did not have any prediction of the interaction effect between variables we tested two models: the first, an additive model without any interaction between variables; and the second, a full model that includes all possible interaction effects among variables. In both models, the continuous variable was standardized. For the educational institution, dummy variables were created for the children in international schools and in the monastery school. All the analysis is conducted with R (version 4.0.3).

Result. The result summary of the generalized linear model without any interaction effects is shown in Table 1. The beta value was only significant with whether children were in the monastery school or not (β = -2.25, SE = 0.89, z = -2.52, p = .011, SE signifies standard error). There was no significant effect of age (β = 0.139, SE = 0.338, z = 0.413, p = .680) yet a marginally significant effect of gender (boys more likely to choose majority rule but not significant; β = - 2.25, SE = 0.89, z = -2.52, p = .067). The result is consistent with the model with all possible interactions and no other variables showed statistically significant effects except whether children are in the monastery school or not (β = -2.07, SE = 0.90, z = -2.29, p = .022).

Table 1. The result summary of GLM (additive model; * p < .05).

β SE z p

intercept -0.524 0.905 -0.579 .562

institution (international school = 1, Other = 0) 0.827 1.175 0.703 .482

institution (monastery school = 1, Other = 0) -2.25 0.892 -2.522 .012*

gender (Female = 0, Male = 1) 2.062 1.126 1.830 .067

age 0.139 0.338 0.413 .680

Furthermore, as a complementary analysis to confirm the result above, we applied a chi- square test to a 2×2 cross table with the choice of children (everyone v. oldest) and whether children were in the monastery school or not. Consistent with the result of GLM, the chi square test revealed that the proportion of choosing everyone is significantly different between children in the monastery school versus others (χ2 = 4.42, p =.036; the descriptive statistics for frequency of choice for each type of educational institution is shown in Figure 1).

Figure 1. The proportion of children choosing to “everyone decides” and “an older child decides” for each type of educational institution. Each square area shows relative proportion and numbers in squares show the frequency.

Discussion The present study asked children whether they prefer majority rule (everyone decides) or authority rule (the oldest child decides) in three types of educational institutions. The result showed that preference for majority rule was strongly influenced by the educational situation. The novel contribution of the present study is that educational background may shape preferences for group decision rules. This result is contrary to previous studies that show a prevalence of majoritarian bias in peer decisions, but have been conducted mostly in Western, developed and democratic countries. The present result suggests that the standard developmental model based on experimental observations in WEIRD countries may not represent the whole population. There are several limitations to the present study. First, the data is not sufficient to explain why children in the monastery school had different preferences from other types of institutions. The result cannot be explained by socioeconomic status since the day-care centre is in a similar setting. One possible explanation could be connection to Western cultures through teachers and volunteers. In our case, the international schools were organized with teachers from Western countries (e.g, the US and UK) and the day-care centre was helped by Western volunteers. Thus these children may be influenced by contact with Westerners.

Another possible explanation is that life in the monastery school is inherently hierarchical. Unlike the day-care children, who have spent much of their lives on the streets and outside of any institutional environment, children at the monastery school live under the authority of monks. Such monastic schools typically educate by rote learning, and enforce strict loyalty or conversion to Buddhism even among non-Buddhist pupils (Lorch 2008); thus such children are likely accustomed to accepting the decisions of authority figures. Such hierarchical thinking was reflected in our observations during experiments. Children at the monastic school formed a queue to enter the classroom to participate in our study. Older children would then spontaneously take on the role of a guard, acting to prevent other children from jumping the queue. This was especially evident when teachers were absent. It seems that the environment in the monastic school might thus foster a tendency to obey older children or other authorities.

A further limitation is that the present study only recruited Buddhist children, representing the religious majority in Burma, and predominantly ethnic Burman children, representing the ethnic majority. Other groups do not identify themselves as Burman and may follow different religions, including Islam, Hinduism, , or others. Further study in more diverse children from different ethnic and religious backgrounds is an important topic to explore deep cultural interaction effects on preference of group decision making rules. We hope that the present study constitutes a first step to show the importance of studying children without a Western background or formal education due to their low socioeconomic status, who have been thus far rather neglected in the experimental developmental psychology literature. References

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