Poster #101 - Living in a Digital World: Children’s Reasoning About How Social History Influences the Personal Value of Digital and Physical Possessions.

• In Event: Poster Session 18

Abstract

The non-obvious historical paths of objects are a foundational factor to how children interact with and assign value to objects (Gelman, 2013). Preschoolers use the unobserved history of an object to explain who owns it by tracking its history of buying, making, or finding (Nancekivell & Friedman, 2014). Around this time, young children reason about an object's authenticity and monetary value based on its historical path (Frazier & Gelman, 2009; Gelman et al., 2015; Hood & Bloom, 2008). Little is known about how children use different histories to construct object value in the digital and physical world. In two studies, we examined how collaborative or social experiences related to creating an object influence children’s thinking about its value. Namely, how much an object is liked or is special to its owner.

Study 1 explores how children (5- to 10-years old; N = 93) weigh two different histories when reasoning about object value in digital and physical settings. Children were told about pairs of digital and physical objects that a peer created with a friend (“social history”), or on their own (“non-social history”). Children were asked to judge which objects are special and which objects are more likable. There was a large main effect of judgment type (likes vs. special), b = 1.89 [1.09, 2.67], SE = 0.40, p < .001, odds-ratio = 6.55. Children selected the friend object (i.e., social history) more often when judging an object’s specialness than its likeability (Figure 1). Specifically, young children view social history as an important determinant of an object’s specialness but not an object’s likeability.

Study 2 is an on-going investigation that expands on the collaborative shared experience by examining whether the quality of social relationships influences children’s thinking about the value of digital objects. It offers a stronger test of children’s appreciation of the ways objects symbolize relationships and shared experiences. We manipulate the social relationships by showing children digital objects a peer either created with a girl she gets along with and a girl she does not get along with. Study 2 measures how children think about these constructs using a continuous scale by asking children to judge how special and likable several objects are on a 10-point Likert scale, because constructs of liking and specialness are likely continuous. This is a novel approach that allows children to make detailed judgments. Children (aged 5- to 8-years old; N = 16) rated the objects created from the positive relationship as more special (M = 7.69; SD = 2.81) than the object created from the negative relationship (M = 5.06; SD = 4; Figure 2). Specifically, young children consider the quality of social relationships when reasoning about the special value of co-created objects.

The current investigation highlights a new influence on object value that has been overlooked by the literature. Together, these studies demonstrate a new way in which young children look beyond the immediately perceptible to reason about the world around them (e.g., Gelman, 1996; Kushnir et al., 2008; Nancekivell et al., 2013; Wellman, 1992).

Authors

• Keiana Price, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Presenting Author

• Jasmine M. DeJesus, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

• Shaylene E. Nancekivell, University of Manitoba