Being versus appearing smart: Children make inferences about behavior based on reputational concerns

• In Event: 1-200 - Managing Others’ Beliefs About the Self: Bridging Reputation Management and Theory of Mind

Integrative Statement

Being seen as “smart” or “helpful” can bring one a slew of personal benefits, and so people often want to be perceived by others as “smart” or “helpful.” As adults, we recognize that there is a clear difference between someone who genuinely wants to be “smart” or “helpful” and someone who simply wants to appear as though they have these traits in order to obtain reputational benefits. While being able to distinguish between such individuals is important for successfully navigating the social world, little is known about the developmental roots of this ability to discern between such intrinsic and reputational motivations.

Here we explore how four- to nine-year-old children make predictions about the behavior of those who want to “be smart” versus merely “seem smart”. We chose this age range because previous research has found that, while children as young as four- or five-years-old engage in reputation management behavior (e.g, Englemann et al., 2012), they have difficulty understanding that others engage in deceptive reputation management strategies until age eight (Heyman et al., 2014; Shaw & Silver, 2018). The present research builds on this existing literature by specifically examining when children begin to use information regarding others’ reputational concerns to form expectations about behavior.

In three studies, 4-9-year olds were told about two students, one of whom wants to be smart and one of whom merely wants to “seem” smart (i.e., has reputational concerns). In Study 1 (N = 96; Mage = 6.89 years; 63% female) children were asked which of these two students would lie about failing a test and we found that six- to nine-year-olds, but not four- to five-year-olds, predicted that the student with reputational concerns would be more likely to lie to a peer about a failing grade, p < .001. This is not merely because they think that the student with reputational concerns is more likely to do bad things. In Study 2 (N = 97; Mage = 6.87 years; 60% female) children were asked which of the two students would ask for help in front of the entire class. Again, six- to nine-year-olds, but not four- to five-year-olds, predicted that the student who wanted to “seem” smart would be less likely seek help in this situation, p =.003. These findings suggest that children think that people who want to “seem” smart will engage in behaviors to manage their reputation as early as age six.

In order to further examine the extent to which these inferences are driven by reputation specifically, a third study is being carried out to compare children’s expectations for these students’ help-seeking behaviors in public versus private. Thus far, children predict that those who want to seem smart will seek help in private, but not publicly, suggesting that these behavioral predictions are related to children’s reputational reasoning.

These studies build on past research on children’s understanding of reputation and suggest that, as early as age six, children understand how reputational motives can shape people’s behavior.

Authors

• Kayla Good, University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Alex Shaw, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author