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

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Partner choice decisions carry important consequences: Choosing good partners may yield the benefits of lifelong cooperative partnerships, whereas choosing bad partners may lead to exploitation or, even worse, harm. Further, the potential for partner choice leads to enhanced cooperation within groups. Because of its role in motivating cooperation, partner choice in adults has received much attention. By contrast, relatively less work has focused on partner choice decisions in children, meaning our understanding of the ontogenetic emergence of partner choice and its constitutive processes is limited. Here, we showcase work addressing this gap. Collectively, we show that children’s partner choice decisions are surprisingly sophisticated, sensitive to many of the same factors that influence partner choice in adulthood.

First, P1 shows that, from infancy, children hold expectations that partner choice decisions are guided by an abstract concept of ingroup loyalty. P2 and P3 focus on partner choice in the domain of cooperation: In P2 we learn that young children positively evaluate and prefer to interact with those who contribute to the common good than those who free-ride. In P3 we learn that partner choice decisions (relative to punishment decisions) show early-emerging sensitivity to intentionality. Our final presentation offers a fresh perspective on partner choice decisions beyond the moral domain, showing that partner choice decisions are guided by competency judgments in addition to prosociality. Together, these studies demonstrate that sophisticated partner choice emerges early in ontogeny, highlighting the importance of partner choice in human cognition across the lifespan.

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chairs

• Justin Martin, Boston College

• Katherine McAuliffe, Boston College

Individual Presentations

• Toddlers and Infants Hold an Abstract Expectation of Ingroup Loyalty - Presenting Author: Lin Bian, Cornell University; Non-Presenting Author: Renee Baillargeon, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Developmental Origins of Promoting the Common Good - Presenting Author: Fan Yang, Yale University; Non-Presenting Author: You-jung Choi, Harvard University; Non-Presenting Author: Antonia Misch, Ludwig Maximilian University; Non-Presenting Author: Xin Yang, Yale University; Non-Presenting Author: Yarrow Dunham, Yale

• The intent-based development of partner choice - Presenting Author: Justin Martin, Boston College; Non-Presenting Author: Kyleigh Leddy, Boston College; Non-Presenting Author: Katherine McAuliffe, Boston College

• Young children’s attitudes towards individuals with unique skills - Presenting Author: Jan Engelmann, Yale University; Non-Presenting Author: Yarrow Dunham, Yale