Young Children Make Use of Reputational Knowledge for Their Own and Others’ Benefit

Abstract

Human social life is shaped by a keen sensitivity to how others perceive us. This dissertation examines how children begin to make use of reputational knowledge for their own and others’ benefit. Across three chapters and nine experiments involving 3- to 7-year-olds, I ask when children start to expect that others will modify their behavior to manage their reputations, whether their understanding of reputation management extends to ideas about forgiveness and appropriate excuses, and whether they understand the power of costly, sacrificial actions to signal desirable traits about oneself (i.e., commitment). Chapter 2 (the first set of studies) explores whether children expect others to act more prosocially when being observed. In Study 1, children chose which of two puppets to ask for stickers: one who believed his sharing would be filmed and shown to peers, and one who believed his behavior would remain private. Children aged four to seven chose the “public” puppet above chance, and older children often explained their choice by referring to evaluation or reputation. Study 2 reversed the situation so that sharing was against the rules. Now, older children chose the private puppet, showing that they understood that observation does not promote generosity under all circumstances. In Study 3, children were told that both puppets were being filmed, but that one lived near and saw the observers often, while the other lived far away. Older children chose the close-to-observers puppet, revealing that they understood individuals to care differently about their reputations depending on the composition of the audience. A fourth, exploratory study tested whether embarrassment serves as a cue of prosocial intent. Although children could identify which puppet was embarrassed, they did not systematically prefer him as a sharing partner, suggesting that they recognize embarrassment but do not yet link it to generosity.Chapter 3 shifts from partner choice to excuse giving. After hearing about a specific transgression, in this case missing a friend’s birthday, children were asked which excuse out of two options a character should give. In Study 1, we compared prosocial, incompetent, and selfish excuses. Children preferred prosocial to selfish explanations, and with age they distinguished incompetent from selfish excuses, showing an emerging awareness of moral versus ability-based blame. Study 2 tested excuses that shifted blame entirely, such as blaming your absence on a flat tire or the fact that one’s mother was sick. Children preferred these blameless excuses and explained their choices using ideas of believability and relationship repair. Together, these findings show that children begin to reason about excuse giving as a form of social maintenance that balances honesty, likability, and responsibility.Chapter 4 examines whether children recommend actions that carry personal cost as reputation-enhancing signals. In Study 1, older children, but not preschoolers, increasingly advised protagonists to choose high-cost actions, such as giving up valued items, especially when rewards involved resources or group membership. They also referred to “cost” more often in their explanations. A follow-up study separated types of cost and found that children judged material sacrifices as equally meaningful to physical effort, suggesting that children understand cost on a broad level and do not view physical effort as the only meaningful, socially relevant sacrifice. One other follow-up asked if preschoolers be more likely to recommend costly appeals in a more ecologically relevant context, but still, we found that the costly appeal was not especially salient to them.In sum, these studies trace the emergence of a sophisticated use of reputational knowledge from preschool to early school age. Children not only care about how they themselves are perceived, but also anticipate when others will act differently under observation and use that knowledge to make strategic social choices. By six or seven years of age, they show a developing theory of reputation management that guides how they choose social partners and how they advise others on critical issues such as how to be forgiven and how to acquire resources or gain entry into a club. These findings advance the developmental literature by showing that children use reputational knowledge not only to manage their own public image, but also to strategically anticipate others’ behavior and to advise others on how to make socially prudent decisions.