Does Source of Achievement Matter? Examining the Naturalness Bias in Chinese Children and Adults

• In Event: Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Topic - Social Cognition

Abstract

Talent and effort are both foundational to our achievement, and how we perceive them can critically impact our decisions across multiple domains, from setting individual goals to supporting societal policies. Previous work has shown that while people explicitly value effort over talent, they implicitly privilege naturals possessing talent over strivers expending effort to achieve the same goals, a phenomenon known as the naturalness bias (Tsay & Banaji, 2011). Research on the naturalness bias has been largely based on Western adults; relatively little is known about how it might emerge in a non-Western culture. Therefore, we conducted two experiments with young children and adults in China to examine the naturalness bias further.
In two mid-sized Chinese cities, 189 preschool children (Mage = 6.32 years, SD = 0.35; 97 girls) and 223 undergraduate students (Mage = 20.12 years, SD = 1.88; 116 women) participated in the study. Participants were randomly assigned to either a natural or a striver condition. In both conditions, participants heard a story of a protagonist (gender-matched to participants) who had succeeded in socializing with others, either by making friends (children) or by business networking (adults). The protagonist’s achievement was attributed to talent in the natural condition and to effort in the striver condition. Following the story, participants rated the protagonist along multiple dimensions, which included perceived success, warmth, competence, and performance. At the end, participants reported their explicit beliefs about the importance of talent and effort.
Results showed that even at a young age, Chinese participants exhibited the naturalness bias when considering other individuals. Compared to those in the striver condition, Chinese children in the natural condition rated the protagonist higher on the dimensions of success, t(187) = 2.41, p = .02, d = 0.35; warmth, t(187) = 2.59, p = .01, d = 0.38; and competence, t(187) = 2.49, p = .01, d = 0.36; but not when evaluating the protagonist’s performance. By contrast, Chinese adults showed the naturalness bias only in terms of competence; specifically, participants in the natural condition rated the protagonist’s competence more highly than participants in the striver condition, t(221) = 0.25, p = .02, d = 0.32, but along the other dimensions there were no between-condition differences. Figures 1 and 2 demonstrate the comparisons of the naturalness bias shown by children and adults across the different dimensions. For both conditions, child and adult participants explicitly rated the importance of effort higher than the importance of talent.
Our results suggest that not only does the naturalness bias appear across different cultures, it emerges at a young age and extends into adulthood. Both children and adults implicitly prefer naturals over strivers in Chinese society, although they explicitly prefer effort over talent. This naturalness bias, in turn, affects people’s social perceptions towards unfamiliar individuals. However, some age-related differences were observed, in that the naturalness bias is weaker among Chinese adults compared to Chinese children. This diminishing of the bias suggests that the culture in which individuals are raised can influence their social cognition over time.

Authors

• Shaocong Ma, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
  Non-Presenting Author

• Eva E. Chen, National Tsing Hua University
  Presenting Author