Overheard evaluative comments: Implications for beliefs about effort and ability

Abstract

This research examined the effects of overhearing an adult praise an unseen child for not needing to work hard on an academic task. Five‐year‐old Han Chinese children (total N = 270 across three studies; 135 boys, collected 2020–2021) who heard this low effort praise tended to devalue effort relative to a baseline condition in which the overheard conversation lacked evaluative content. In Study 3, low effort praise increased children's endorsement of essentialist beliefs about ability and their interest in becoming the kind of person who does not need to work hard to succeed. The findings show that overhearing evaluative comments about other people, a pervasive feature of daily life, can have a systematic effect on young children's beliefs about achievement.

Does first‐hand evidence undermine young children's initial trust in positive gossip? Evidence from 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children

“…Similar results have been found in studies on the effects of overheard conversations, such as overhearing compliments about the abilities and efforts of others and overhearing negative evaluations of unfamiliar groups (Conder & Lane, 2021; Lane et al, 2020; Qin et al, 2021; Zhao et al, 2020, 2022). Lane et al (2020) investigated the implicit and explicit attitudes of 4‐ to 9‐year‐old children towards a novel social group when those attitudes were formed after either directly hearing or overhearing negative information about that group.…”

Overheard and understood: A systematic review of children’s learning from overhearing.

“…Although most articles in this systematic review examined how children learn language and facts, our second objective was to evaluate how overhearing influences children’s learning of social information. Eight studies (Conder & Lane, 2021; Lane et al, 2020; Ma et al, 2018; Qin et al, 2021; Sai et al, 2020; Sierksma, 2023; Zhao et al, 2020, 2022) revealed that children can acquire attitudes toward other social groups, behave in moral or immoral ways, and change the types of interactions they have with others, based on overheard information. These studies featured primarily adult–adult dyads, with the exception of Conder and Lane (2021), which found no difference between adult–adult and adult–child dyads.…”

“…Overhearing social information can influence children’s beliefs about other people or social groups. Zhao et al’s (2022) study investigated children’s responses when they overheard an experimenter praise another child on a phone call. When children heard about a child who was praised for not having to work very hard, they gave them a reward and rated them as “smarter” than a random child.…”

“…For example, preschool-age children who overheard another child being praised or given a prize for honesty (Ma et al, 2018), or being described as virtuous (Sai et al, 2020), were more likely to confess to peeking at the answer to a test. Children also engaged in generous behavior after overhearing adults praise others for generosity or effort (Qin et al, 2021; Zhao et al, 2022). However, Zhao et al (2020) found that overhearing information could be deleterious to children’s moral behavior.…”

“…Research has recently pivoted to include overheard conversations where an adult uses a technological device, like a cellphone or video call (Conder & Lane, 2021; Foushee & Xu, 2016; Foushee et al, 2021; Lane et al, 2020; Zhao et al, 2022). Much like the work on children’s learning of social information, most of this research has been published since 2020.…”