“Look, I can do it!” Young children use others’ prior observations to communicate about the self

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

Integrative Statement

Prior work on Theory of Mind has revealed early-emerging abilities to understand how others’ beliefs can change with communication (e.g., Song et al., 2008; Liszkowski et al., 2008). Preschool-aged children actively cause specific revisions to others’ beliefs by selectively communicating information, for better (e.g., teaching; Gweon, Shafto, & Schulz, 2014) or for worse (e.g., deceiving; Ding et al., 2015). However, little work has examined how children might use these inferential and communicative capacities to infer and change others’ beliefs about the self.

A recent body of work shows that preschool-aged children are concerned with their reputation (e.g., Leimgruber et al., 2012; Engelmann et al., 2012). Here, we characterize reputation as others’ beliefs about desirable traits of the self (e.g., competence), and ask whether children strategically communicate information to revise others’ beliefs about the self.

In Study 1 (Age: 3-4; N=79), children failed to operate a music toy with one confederate (Fail Confederate) and succeeded with another confederate (Success Confederate). Children chose to tell the Fail Confederate that they can make the toy go (71%, p = .008, Binomial) but successfully reported that the Success confederate thinks that they can make it go (73%, p = .008, Binomial).

In Study 2 (Age: 3-5; N=92), children learned how to activate two toys. In the Absent condition, a confederate observed the child fail at operating the Observed Toy (light-up or music toy; counterbalanced) and left before the child’s final success; in the Present condition, the confederate observed the child’s final success. In the absence of the confederate, children in both conditions learned how to operate the Unobserved Toy (the other toy). When asked to show the confederate a toy, children were more likely to choose the Observed Toy in the Absent Condition than in the Present Condition (63% (Absent) vs. 27% (Present), p < .001; Fisher’s Exact Test). Children in the Present Condition showed a strong preference to show the Unobserved Toy (73%, p = .004, Binomial Test), but children in the Absent Condition did not show a clear preference for either toy (p = .111, Binomial Test), suggesting that they were split between teaching new information and demonstrating their competence.

Study 3 replicated Study 2 with 3-4 year-olds (N=131): Children chose the Observed Toy more often in the Absent Condition than Present Condition (54% (Absent) vs. 30% (Present), p = .008; Fisher’s Exact Test). Together, these results suggest that by the preschool years, children exhibit a tradeoff between communicating information about the self versus information about the external world depending on others’ beliefs.

Theory of Mind allows us to not only reason about people’s beliefs about the world, but also people’s beliefs about us. The ability to communicate effectively about ourselves to others is a critical skill for navigating our everyday social interactions. Our work takes a novel step in bridging research in Theory of Mind and reputation management by exploring how children’s inferential and communicative capacities allow them to communicate with others about the self.

Authors

• Mika Asaba, Stanford University
  Presenting Author

• Hyowon Gweon, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author