Preschooler’s Partner Choice For Mutual Cooperation

• In Event: Social Relationships in Preschool and Primary School

Abstract

It has been established that children prefer prosocial over antisocial others (Hamlin et al., 2007, 2011). However, when children have to decide with whom to cooperate on a problem-solving task, a potential partner’s skill is another important to consider as well. Little is known about how children choose in social situations when potential cooperative partners differ among more than one dimension. Do children prefer a skillful or a prosocial partner? Previous work in a related domain on choosing between different informants to test children’s epistemic trust has shown that children have difficulties viewing both epistemic and social cues, to make decisions about which informant to trust (Tong et al., 2019), suggesting that it might not an easy choice for children to weigh the role of skill and prosociality when choosing cooperative partners. The current research project investigates how preschoolers resolve the dilemma of choosing a cooperative partner when presented with two conflicting characteristics (competency vs. prosociality).
In Study 1, 96 children aged 4-6 years old (48 girls) were presented with an online collaborative, goal-oriented game and asked which of two potential partners they preferred to play with in to complete a problem-solving task and get a reward. The partners were shown either high in competency (e.g., harvesting more apples) and low in prosociality (e.g., sharing unequally in a previous task) or vice versa. The results of Study 1 indicated that children in every age group did not show clear preferences toward either of the partners but made their decisions based on how difficult they assessed the task. The more difficult children perceived the task to be, the more frequently they selected the competent but less prosocial partner (Nagelkerke R2 = .49, b = 1.45, Wald = 24.71, p < .001). Figure 1 presents the results.
To replicate our findings and directly test whether perceived task difficulty is a relevant factor for children, we conducted a follow-up study. Study 2 used the same basic design, with the additional feature that we directly manipulated task difficulty. In a pre-registration, we hypothesized that children would prefer (1) the prosocial but less competent partner when they received a simple task and (2) the competent but less prosocial partner if they received a difficult task. We are testing 90 children aged 4-6 years old. Preliminary results from 75% of the planned sample seem to support our hypothesis. Children prefer to cooperate with a competent but less prosocial partner if the task is difficult, but choose the prosocial partner for the easy task. Figure 2 presents the results.
In summary, we will present two studies examining what kind of traits children value more when choosing a partner for mutual cooperation. Our results suggest that young children think strategically when choosing a partner for a goal-oriented task and consider both competence and prosociality based on the perceived tasks’ difficulty.

Authors

• Katarzyna Myślińska Szarek, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author

• Felix Warneken, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor