Children’s Beliefs and Evaluations About Overcoming Constraints in Academic Achievement and their Relationship to Persistence

• In Event: Social Class in Education: Children’s Beliefs About who is Smart, Hardworking, and Praiseworthy

Abstract

When making inferences and evaluations about others’ achievements, we not only care about what someone has achieved, but also how they achieved it. While some people are equipped with natural talents and resources and can easily achieve success without much hard work, others face various constraints—for example, disadvantages in natural talent or social class —and may have to work harder to overcome these constraints in order to achieve success. Here we investigated how children consider the constraints someone overcomes in their beliefs and evaluations of academic achievement, and how these considerations may relate to children’s own persistence and challenge-seeking behaviors. We recruited 4- to 8-year-olds (N = 140, age range 4.03~8.99, Mage = 6.52) from China. We first administered two tasks measuring children’s views about constraints. In the choice belief task, we asked whether they believed someone could choose to overcome internal constraints (i.e., not being smart) or external constraints (i.e., not having good education) to achieve academic success. In the evaluation task, we presented two story characters who both performed well on exams, but one had to overcome internal or external constraints, while the other did not have these constraints. We asked participants which character they considered as more hardworking, who should get a prize, who they preferred, and who would be more successful in the future. We also measured children’s persistence by recording how long they persisted before giving up when asked to open a difficult puzzle box, and measured their challenge-seeking behavior by asking them to choose between a difficult task that they could learn from but might get wrong versus an easy task from which they would not learn much. We found clear developmental changes in children’s beliefs and evaluations regarding constraints (see Figure 1): With age, children increasingly believed that one can choose to overcome internal constraints (i.e., lack of ability) or external constraints (i.e., lack of educational resources) to achieve academic success, and inferred that someone who overcame such constraints worked harder than someone who did not experience such constraints (p < .001). Children also increasingly rewarded someone who overcame constraints, preferred him/her, and predicted that he/she would be more successful in the future (ps < .001). We also found a correlation between some of these views and children’s persistence and challenge-seeking behaviors. Children who positively evaluated those who overcome external constraints also persisted longer in opening the difficult puzzle box (partial correlation with age controlled, r = .20, p = .021). Children who positively evaluated those who overcome internal constraints were more likely to seek challenges (partial correlation with age controlled, r = .20, p = .020). These findings reveal that children gradually recognize the possibility and positivity of overcoming disadvantages in natural talent or social class to achieve academic success. More importantly, children who positively evaluate those who overcome constraints are also more persistent and challenge-seeking themselves. Our findings provide potential opportunities to improve children’s resilience in the face of difficulties by changing their beliefs and reasoning about constraints.

Author

• Xin Alice Zhao, East China Normal University
  Presenting Author