Young children show sensitivity to specific reputational expectations

• In Event: 1-200 - Managing Others’ Beliefs About the Self: Bridging Reputation Management and Theory of Mind

Integrative Statement

For adults, living up to specific reputational expectations is a key part of reputation management. However, little is known about the precursors to this ability in childhood. We sought to examine this question among 3- to 5-year-olds in China, by using a peeking paradigm in which children had to decide whether to cheat in order to win a prize.

In a first study we examined whether having a reputation for being good would make children less willing to cheat. In a between-subjects manipulation, each child in a reputation condition was told that the experimenter had heard he or she was a good kid. There was also a control condition in which no reputation information was provided. About 80% of the 3- and 4-year-olds cheated, regardless of condition. However, the 5-year-olds in the reputation condition were significantly less likely to cheat than their counterparts in the control condition (60% versus 90%), which suggests that they were able to resist the temptation to cheat if doing so would help them to maintain their good reputation.

In a second study we examined whether children would be more willing to cheat if doing so would be beneficial to their reputation, rather than harmful. To avoid ceiling effects we modified the peeking paradigm by asking each child to promise not to cheat. Children participated in (1) an experimental prosocial condition in which they were told that any prize they win would go to a child who is unable to play the game and the experimenter would find out about it, (2) a no reputational benefit prosocial condition that was identical except the experimenter would not discover whether they had won, or (3) a control condition in which they were told they would keep any prize they win for themselves. Among the 5-year-olds, those in the experimental prosocial condition showed a prosocial cheating effect, in which there were higher rates of cheating as compared to the control condition. However, no such effect was seen for the 5-year-olds in the no reputational benefit prosocial condition, which suggests the prosocial cheating effect is driven by children’s concern with signaling to the experimenter that they are prosocial (see Figure 1).

In a third study we again examined whether reputational concerns would make children more willing to cheat, this time with reference to upholding a reputation for being smart. Three- and 5-year-olds were assigned to a smart reputation condition in which they were told they have a reputation for being smart, or to one of two control conditions: one with no reputation information, and one with positive information about an irrelevant trait (i.e., cleanliness). Both 3-year-olds and 5-year-olds cheated significantly more in the smart reputation condition than in either control condition (see Figure 2).

Taken together, the findings show that different reputational cues can have highly disparate effects on cheating rates. More broadly, the findings suggest that even young children are highly sensitive to cues about the specific reputational expectations of others, and that they can adjust their behavior accordingly.

Authors

• Gail D Heyman, University of California, San Diego
  Presenting Author

• Li Zhao, Hangzhou Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author