Poster #191 - Different Developing Intuitions About the Meaning of Modesty in the United States and China.

• In Event: 1-061 - Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Section - Social Cognition

Integrative Statement

In the adult world reputation is critical and appropriate self-presentation can lead to positive social evaluation as well as better opportunities. Although self-promotion is important, in some cases presenting oneself as competent can make one look bad (Steinmetz et al, 2017). Because of this fact, adults often appreciate modesty (Chancellor & Lyubomirsky, 2013). Recent work suggests that reputation is also valued by children (e.g., Engelmann, 2017; Silver & Shaw, 2018), but little work has addressed how they think about confidence vs. modesty. The current research investigates children’s evaluations of confident vs. modest people in the context of competition, exploring if these intuitions differ across development and culture (US vs. China).

In three studies, 4- to 11-year-old Chinese (N = 565) and American (N = 296) children were presented with scenarios where the class needs to vote for one representative to join in a school-wise competition (running race in Study 1 and 2, and math in Study 3). Two characters both want to be in the competition but present themselves differently: One expresses uncertainty regarding his ability (modest character) while the other asserts he can win (confident character). Children were then asked to judge whom they would vote for, whom they liked better, whom they thought had a higher chance of winning, and the characters own belief about his ability (See Figure 1 & 2).

We had two predictions. First, we predicted that children would place a greater value on modesty as they got older because previous research suggests an increasing appreciation for modesty as children mature (Watling & Barnejee, 2007). Second, we predicted that children would value modesty more in China and in particular they would be more likely to see modest children as competent. We make this prediction because modesty is uniquely associated with low explicit and high implicit self-esteem in China, suggesting that self-depreciation is a culturally appropriate way to express self-enhancement (Cai et al., 2011). Across the three studies we found support for these predictions.

First, in both cultures, children were more likely to vote for the modest character to be the class representative, to like him, and to think that he would win the competition as they matured (p’s < 0.001). Interestingly, and somewhat counter to our prediction, there was no cultural differences on which character children voted for or who they liked more.

Importantly, and in line with our predictions, the two cultures differed in their inferences about the characters’ ability to win. Chinese children in general thought the modest character was more likely to win than American children (p < 0.001). Further, when asked to infer the characters own belief about his ability Chinese children rated the modest character to believe more in his own ability than American children (p < 0.001 ). That is, Chinese children thought that modest characters were more competent and believed more in themselves.

The findings suggest that though children increasingly appreciate modesty in both cultures, the inference they make from modesty is quite different.

Authors

• Yinyuan Zheng, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author

• Zhenni Lin, The University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alex Shaw, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author