Learning to navigate social situations is an important part of growing up. Some cognitive scientists study children in order to develop a better sense of how children perceive other people and how this might affect their social interactions.
Both children and adults face choices about when to cooperate and with whom to cooperate. As adults, we sometimes base these decisions on information we hear from others. Do children rely on the advice and experiences of others when deciding on a playmate? How do they decide whose advice to follow? We are exploring whether children listen to others’ opinions when deciding whether to share with another person and when deciding between cooperation partners.
In this study, children ages 3-10 are asked to decide who they would want to play games with by choosing between two possible partners presented on a computer screen. Before making a choice, children are introduced to other characters who provide conflicting information about the partners on the screen. For example, a character named Alex might tell the child that when he played with Annie, she was selfish. Then Joseph might tell the child that he heard that Annie was kind. We are interested in whether children take these kinds of statements into account, and how children decide which pieces of information are most reliable and most important for picking partners. Do children pay attention to whether information was obtained first-hand or through gossip? Do they take into account the relationship between the character and the person providing the information?
With this study, we hope to gain deeper insight into the way children use information about others’ reputations to make social decisions.
Learn about other research related to Reasoning about Social Situations.
This research is conducted by the Laboratory for Developmental Studies at Harvard University