Social capabilities across human development | Part 15
Closeness is not permission to know everything. Family and friends can have information they do not want to discuss, objects they do not want to show, or details they do not want passed on. Checking sharing boundaries can help preserve a relationship.
A closed diary in a shared room
An older sister writes in a diary. Her younger brother asks, "Can I see?" She closes it and replies, "I'd rather not show this." He withdraws his hand and returns to his own book. They continue sharing the room while the diary remains with her.
This is fictional. The brother neither demands justification nor opens it because they are family. A choice not to share can remain without reducing closeness.
Disclosure judgments become more complex
Kim, Harris, and Warneken presented children aged 4-5 and 7-8 with stories about a peer's rule-following or rule-breaking and competence or lack of a skill. Younger children approved sharing positive information and disapproved sharing negative information in both categories. Older children disapproved revealing incompetence but approved revealing a rule violation. The study used story judgments, rather than observing real disclosure in every relationship. See Is it okay to tell?.
These findings cannot become a simple stage in which older children always keep secrets. Personal feelings, rules, and responsibility interact. This article uses differences in content, audience, and purpose as an entry point for examining everyday boundaries.
What people tell family can also change with roles and relationships. Childhood sharing habits should not override an adult's current wishes.
Knowing information and being allowed to share it differ
A friend's concern cannot necessarily be repeated because another friend is also close. Knowing a housemate's schedule differs from being authorized to explain it in detail to a visitor. Check how information was obtained and its permitted sharing scope.
Boundaries do not mean never sharing anything. A person may choose to disclose information to obtain support. Exceptions involving safety or legal duties need separate responsibilities and procedures, rather than guesses about closeness.
Observable social actions include asking, accepting refusal, confirming recipients, and enabling later changes of scope.
A design hypothesis for physical AI
A possible design associates remembered information with its subject, permitted recipients and purposes, expiry, and corrections. Membership in a family group should not grant access to all information.
Check sharing conditions before generating a response. If authority is unclear, withhold the content while clarifying. Deletion or correction requests must affect subsequent responses as well as the current display.
Evaluation could ask the same question through family, friends, and visitors, withdraw consent, or change the purpose of use. The proposal examines necessary scope and personal boundaries rather than maximizing information disclosed.
A decision in four panels
- Someone writes in a diary.
- They decline a request to show it.
- The other withdraws and returns to their own book.
- They remain comfortably together without sharing the diary.
This fictional comic does not portray having a boundary as rejecting the relationship.
References
About this series
This series uses published literature to examine everyday situations. Its 7 domains and 22 capabilities are an editorial framework, not a standard academic classification. Differences in age or culture are not rankings of people's social worth or capability. The proposed AI designs do not establish humanlike emotional experience or demonstrated product performance. The comics illustrate fictional examples.
LOGIHEART's research and development vision
LOGIHEART is researching how to implement social capabilities in physical AI that interacts with people.
Explore the research and development vision at the LOGIHEART website and in the English introduction video.
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