Children’s Acknowledgment of Economic Constraints When Inferring Other’s Preferences

• In Event: Ownership and Economic Considerations in Childhood and Adolescence

Abstract

To successfully navigate the social world requires the ability to make inferences about others’ mental states, such as their desires and preferences (Kushnir et al., 2010). One factor that can make this challenging for children is that the same action can have different implications for mental states depending on the context in which the action occurs. One important context is whether someone is constrained by external factors when taking the action (Pesowski et al., 2016). Prior research has shown that children as young as 5 are sensitive to some types of external constraints when inferring others’ preferences, including physical constraints (Amemiya et al., 2022) and social-moral constraints (Pesowski et al., 2016), such that they refrain from making strong preference judgments when agents are constrained by these factors. Here we aim to examine whether children can acknowledge another type of constraint – an economic constraint – when inferring other agents’ preferences. This question has significant implications for our understanding of societal inequality and prejudice against disadvantaged people (Cozzarelli et al., 2001).
To answer this question, participants read stories about two child characters who selected between two possible toys at a store, one of which was cheaper than the other. Both chose the cheaper toy. The critical difference was that in one case the person making the choice was economically constrained, and in one case they were not. Specifically, in the constraint scenario, the character had a limited budget and could only afford the cheaper toy. In the no constraint condition, the character had a sufficient budget to choose either item (but still purchased the cheaper one). Then, participants were asked to evaluate how much the characters liked each of the items on 7-point Likert scales in the following format: How much do you think [Character’s Name] likes [Item Name]? Higher ratings represent higher preference.
A preliminary study with 72 college students (Mean age = 20.58, 76% female) led to stronger inferences that the cheaper item was preferred in the no constraint condition (M = 6.19/7) than that in the constraint condition (M = 4.95/7), t(71) = 7.05, p < .001, demonstrating that adults take into account economic constraint when inferring others’ preferences (see Figure 1).
To explore the developmental trajectory, we are testing 5- to 13-year-old children. So far, we have tested 45 children (Mean age = 8.33, SD = 1.79, 52% girls) with the same experimental design. The results to date are shown in Figure 2. A mixed linear regression model suggests the trend that as children age, they increasingly align the character’s choice with their preferences in the absence of economic constraints (β = .20, p = .33), but show the opposite pattern in the presence of economic constraints (β = -.31, p = .15). These results suggest that as children age, they increasingly recognize economic constraints when making social inferences.

Authors

• Shuai Shao, University of California - San Diego
  Presenting Author

• Jamie Amemiya, University of California - San Diego

• Gail D Heyman, University of California - San Diego