The Relationship Between Preschoolers’ Understanding of Considerate Socially-mindful Actions and Theory of Mind

• In Event: An Integrative Perspective on the link between Theory of Mind and Moral Development

Abstract

The ability to make evaluations on others’ prosocial and antisocial actions seem to emerge from infancy (e.g., Hamlin et al., 2007). Adults not only evaluate prosocial actions that involve direct transferal of resources, service or information between individuals (Tomasello, 2008), but also evaluate indirect prosocial actions where one’s own self-serving actions may imply consideration for others. One type of such indirect prosocial behavior that has been studied is considerate, socially-mindful act, where one actor considerately grants others the freedom to choose (Van Doesum et al., 2013). Recent studies have shown that between the ages 4 and 6, children increasingly understand and appreciate these socially mindful actions, evaluating someone who leaves a choice for others as nicer than someone who leaves no choice (Zhao et al., 2021). However, little is known about the developmental mechanism of these understandings, for example how the judgments of social mindful actions may correlate with theory-of-mind abilities. We investigate this question among Chinese children.
A total of 100 children aged 4-6 in China participated in this study. Children were first administered a social mindfulness task, where they were asked to compare two story characters, both of whom were to choose a snack in front of another person at snack time. One of the characters left a choice for the person waiting behind when she took a piece of fruit for herself (i.e., acted socially mindful), while the other character in a similar situation left no choice for the person waiting behind (i.e., did not act socially mindful). Children were then asked 1) which of these two characters was nicer (i.e., niceness) and 2) who they would prefer to select as a friend (i.e., friend selection). In addition, children were administered a series of theory-of-mind tasks (including the content false belief task, the location false belief task, and the hidden emotion task). We also measured children’s sharing behaviors using an anonymous sharing task, and measured children’s executive functioning capacity by a Day/Night Stroop task. We found that, first, with age, children increasingly rated the character who left a choice (i.e., the socially-mindful character) as nicer, and increasingly selected the socially-mindful character as a friend (r = .23, p = .020, see Figure 1). Second, when controlling for age, children's responses in the social mindfulness task were significantly correlated with their theory-of-mind (r = .26, p = .008, see Figure 2). Those who evaluated the socially mindful character more favorably also performed better in the theory-of mind tasks. This correlation remained significant when controlling for executive functioning and sharing behaviors (p = .014).
In summary, between the ages 4 and 6, children gradually develop an understanding and evaluation of social mindfulness, and such development is correlated with the development of theory-of-mind abilities. These findings suggest that theory-of-mind understandings may underlie children’s developing understanding and moral judgments of social mindfulness.

Authors

• Xin Alice Zhao, East China Normal University
  Presenting Author

• Dandan Li, East China Normal University