Do children believe immoral events are possible?

Previous research found that young children judge improbable events (e.g., counting all the hairs on a dog’s tail) to be impossible and to require magic. One possibility is that this effect occurs because young children are unable to simulate how they could occur. We argue here for an alternative, which is that these children have an undifferentiated representation of possibility, one that doesn’t distinguish between events that are statistically improbable, physically impossible, or morally prohibited. In two studies, we ask children about the possibility of immoral but otherwise ordinary events (e.g., taking a toy from another child). If children are relying on a capacity for simulation, they should judge them to be possible, but if children have an undifferentiated representation of possibility, they should not. We find that young children judge immoral events to be impossible, much like violations of physics (Study 1) and judge that immoral events would require magic to occur (Study 2). Both studies also find that children’s representation of possibility becomes more differentiated over the course of development.