Four-year-old Children Align their Preferences with those of their Peers

Hennefield, Laura; Markson, Lori

doi:10.1525/collabra.89

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Choices of which artifacts to acquire might also be influenced by social factors, even for the youngest children in our experiments. Young children tend to choose items that others like and avoid items that others dislike (e.g., Hennefield & Markson, 2016 , 2017 ). This could partly arise from conformity concerns, which affect adults (Asch, 1956 ) and children from as young as 4-years-old (e.g., Corriveau et al, 2013 ; Haun & Tomasello, 2011 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novelty preferences depend on goals

2022

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People are sometimes drawn to novel items, but other times prefer familiar ones. In the present research we show, though, that both children’s and adults’ preferences for novel versus familiar items depend on their goals. Across four experiments, we showed 4- to 7-year-olds (total N = 498) and adults (total N = 659) pairs of artifacts where one was familiar and the other was novel (e.g., a four-legged chair and ten-legged chair). In Experiment 1 , children wanted to have familiar artifacts, but to learn about novel ones. Experiment 2 replicated this pattern using a simpler procedure, and found the same pattern in adults. In Experiment 3 , 4- to 6-year-olds and adults more strongly preferred familiar items when choosing which they would rather have than when choosing which they would rather try using. Finally, Experiment 4 replicated adults’ preferences to have familiar items and learn about novel ones with an additional set of items. Together these findings show that preferences for novelty depend on people’s goals. We suggest these effects arise because children and adults are motivated both by the promise of information and the desire for safe options in high commitment decisions that entail risk. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13423-022-02118-9.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novelty preferences depend on goals

2022

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“…However, first‐person tasks might require children to overcome a tendency that could sway them to pursue resources where they are harder rather than easier to obtain! Children often follow majorities, and adopt the views and practices of multiple others when forming and stating preferences (e.g., Birch, 1980; Flynn et al, 2018; Hennefield & Markson, 2017) and when seeking and endorsing information (e.g., Corriveau et al, 2009; Herrmann et al, 2013; Kim & Spelke, 2020; Schillaci & Kelemen, 2014). Although such tendencies were unlikely to impact children in our third‐person tasks, they could lead children to pursue resources where demand is high rather than low.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Easy or difficult? Children's understanding of how supply and demand affect goal completion

2022

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Three experiments examined children's understanding of how supply and demand affect the difficulty of completing goals. Participants were 368 predominantly White Canadians (52% female, 48% male) tested in 2017–2022. In Experiment 1, 3‐year‐olds recognized that obtaining resources is easier where supply exceeds demand than where demand exceeds supply. However, in Experiment 2, 3‐year‐olds were insensitive to supply and demand when comparing situations where demand exceeded supply to a greater or lesser degree. Finally, Experiment 3 revealed a developmental lag in 3‐ to 7‐year‐olds' understanding of how supply and demand affects goal completion: Children succeeded when contrasting a surplus and a shortage of supply relative to demand at 4;2. But they only succeeded when contrasting degrees of greater supply than demand at 5;10.

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“…Previous research with children demonstrated that various cues could steer their preferences for some objects over others. For instance, the associations between an object and social categories (e.g., age, gender) [ 60 ], having information about the preferences of other children [ 61 , 62 ], and even the scarcity or abundance of objects [ 63 , 64 ]. Here, we created an ecological scenario wherein children are given various prizes to choose from but can pick only one to take home with them.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Approach-avoidance orientations can predict young children’s decision-making

Benozio,

Cohenian,

Hepach

2023

PLoS ONE

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When facing situations that involve risk and reward, some may focus on the opportunity for reward, whereas others may focus on potential risks. Here, we used an original set of pictorial scenarios to try and predict 3- to 8-year-olds’ reward-seeking and risk-avoiding behavior in three decision-making scenarios (N = 99; Mage = 5.6; 47% girls). We found that children’s reward-risk tendencies did not predict sharing behavior in a dictator-game ‘sharing’ task. However, they predicted children’s monopolizing behavior in a dictator-game ‘taking’ task and their preferences between taking home a ‘risky’ or a ‘safe’ reward in a novel prize-preference task. Overall, using a set of original pictorial scenarios to assess individual differences early on in development now provides initial evidence that bridges individual differences and decision-making domains and exposes behavioral patterns that were thus far hidden.

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Four-year-old Children Align their Preferences with those of their Peers

Cited by 5 publications

References 43 publications

Novelty preferences depend on goals

Novelty preferences depend on goals

Easy or difficult? Children's understanding of how supply and demand affect goal completion

Approach-avoidance orientations can predict young children’s decision-making

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