Poster #204 - Friends, Strangers, or Foes: Children’s Use of Relationships in Reasoning about Others

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Children are able to use various individual, contextual, and social information to infer the characteristics of unknown others. However, shared relationships are a source of knowledge that has largely been overlooked. In general, homophily research shows that people are more likely to interact with those who are similar to them (MacPherson et al., 2001). Furthermore, interaction itself creates interpersonal similarity.

The present study examined the effects of relationship type on 6-year-olds’, 8-year-olds’, and adults’ inferences about others. Specifically, we examined whether participants would infer higher levels of similarity between characters introduced as friends compared to strangers, but also strangers compared to foes. We also examined whether relationship type was more influential for properties subject to choice (favorite game) compared to properties inherent to an individual (eye color).

On each trial, participants (n = 96) had to decide whether a target person shares a property with another person. Relationship type and property type were crossed resulting in six conditions which were presented within subject. There were four trials in each condition. Only trials where participants correctly responded to a relationship memory check were included in the analysis.

The results suggest that children indeed believe that friends are more similar to each other than either foes or strangers. Adults also revealed a belief that strangers are more similar than foes. There was no interaction between relationship type and property type in any of the groups. With age, individuals in all three relationships, and in particular friends, were perceived as more similar.

The findings expand our understanding of social perception processes and their development. They suggest that relational information is an important information source for children as well as adults. At the same time, they suggest that there is a significant age-related increase in seeing friends as similar. The difference between middle childhood and adulthood may be bridged through the evolving structure and functions of friendships.

Authors

• Stanka A. Fitneva, Queen's University
  Presenting Author

• Kristen Hayward, Queen's University
  Non-Presenting Author