A Bias for Strivers: Developing Evaluations and Beliefs of Talented vs. Hardworking People Across Cultures

• In Event: The Development of Children’s Understanding of Competence and Achievement

Abstract

Lay perspectives on success distinguish between people who succeed because of innate talent (“naturals”) or effort (“strivers”). Popular cultural narratives (e.g., “The American Dream”, and “The Little Engine that Could”) often praise those who expend effort, but in reality, adults tend to ascribe superior achievement to talent and choose to hire naturals (“naturalness bias”; e.g., Tsay, 2016). How do young children evaluate naturals and strivers? And what are the cognitive mechanisms underlying these evaluations? To answer these questions, across four pre-registered studies, we presented 4-9-year-olds and their parents (current n = 289 children and 241 parents) in the US (Studies 1 to 3) and China (Study 4) with pairs of unfamiliar characters who were described as naturals (“really, really smart”) or strivers (“work really, really hard”) and measured their evaluations and lay beliefs.

In Study 1, we asked which characters they preferred (preference) and whom they saw as more similar to themselves (similarity) when both characters were matched in performance. Parents significantly favored strivers, demonstrating a striver bias. Although children did not show this pattern, they were significantly more likely to choose strivers on the preference measure than on the similarity measure, a tendency also observed among parents. Study 2 explored the same questions by removing outcome information. We also asked children which characters would become more successful in the future (prediction). Children developed a striver bias by ages 7 to 9 and also predicted the striver to be more successful in the future, with stronger patterns observed among parents.

Study 3 replicated the age-related increase of the striver bias and further explored the cognitive underpinnings of this bias. In particular, our results revealed that 7-9-year-olds and parents thought of effort as more praiseworthy than talent; and vice versa, participants perceived the lack of effort as more blameworthy than the lack of talent. Parents also perceived effort as more intentional than talent (i.e., one can choose to work hard more readily than to be smart) and associated strivers more with morality (i.e., strivers are more likely to help other people), beliefs not yet developed until age 9. Importantly, beliefs about intentionality predicted striver bias over and above all other predictors we measured (e.g., praiseworthiness and blameworthiness judgments, morality inferences). These beliefs also showed a parent-child correlation, suggesting that children might acquire the striver bias through learning the intentionality of effort from their parents. In an ongoing cross-cultural extension of this work (Study 4), we observe a similar age-related striver bias in Chinese children (with n = 68), suggesting that striver bias might be shared outside of the US context.

Together, these studies document the emergence of a bias favoring effort over talent across development and cultures, and suggest that the beliefs about the intentionality of effort might underlie this bias.

Authors

• Xin Yang, Yale University
  Presenting Author

• Xin Alice Zhao, East China Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lin Bian, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yarrow C Dunham, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author