Young children’s attitudes towards individuals with unique skills

• In Event: 3-032 - Choosey children: early-emerging sophistication in children’s partner choice decisions

Integrative Statement

Successful cooperation requires choosing the right partners. Such partner choice often requires sophisticated judgments about which of several individuals will make the best partner. Potential partners should be evaluated along two main dimensions: prosociality and competence (Tomasello, 2016; Yamagishi & Yamagishi, 1994). Previous research has shown that children engage in partner choice from a young age onwards (Haux et al, 2017; Herrmann et al, 2013; Hamlin & Wynn, 2011). This work, however, has focused exclusively on the prosociality dimension. Thus, in the current research, we ask whether children selectively recruit more competent partners. Following Tooby and Cosmides (1996), we define competence in terms of possessing unique skills, i.e. skills that no one else possesses. We formulated three hypotheses: that children are better at remembering individuals with unique skills; that children like individuals with unique skills more; and, finally, that children, in a partner choice context, preferentially recruit individuals with unique skills.

We investigate these predictions in an interactive paradigm with 4-6 year old children (N=96). In the test condition, children are introduced to five peers and their respective skills (see Figure 1). While two of the skills are shared (they are possessed by two children), one skill is unique (possessed only by one child). Using the example depicted in Figure 1, while two individuals are good at singing, and two other individuals at reading, only one individual is good at drawing. We then probe children’s attitudes towards unique peers compared to non-unique peers by conducting a memory test (DV1), a preference test (DV2), and a partner choice test (DV3).

Data collection is ongoing, but preliminary results (N=29) provide support for our predictions. Specifically, for DV1, 25 children remembered the unique individual correctly, while only 15 children remembered the non-unique individual correctly. Regarding DV2, 13 children rated the unique individual more positively than the non-unique individual, 9 children showed the opposite pattern, and 7 children gave them an identical rating. Finally, for DV3, 48% of children recruited the unique individual (chance level: 40%), and 75% of children recruited the non-unique individual (chance level: 70%).

This study promises to shed light on an aspect of partner choice that has been neglected in previous research: the extent to which young children prefer uniquely competent individuals. The findings are also relevant with regard to recent research showing that children prefer conforming individuals, i.e. individuals that do what everyone does (Roberts, Gelman, Ho, 2016). It might be that in the context of competence, children have an opposite preference: for uniquely skilled individuals, i.e. individuals that stand out because they can do what no one else can do.

Authors

• Jan Engelmann, Yale University
  Presenting Author

• Yarrow Dunham, Yale
  Non-Presenting Author