Children expect people to accurately represent the minds of their close social partners

Abstract

Do children reason that people in close relationships accurately represent each other’s minds? In two experiments (total N = 123), we found that 7- to 9-year-old children from the US (i) reason that people who are close will accurately represent each other’s goals and desires and (ii) infer that people are socially close when they accurately predict each other’s emotional states. These findings suggest that children reason flexibly about mental state attributions within close relationships.