Department of Psychology, University of Chicago.
Department of Human Development, Cornell University.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2021 Aug;150(8):1673-1687. doi: 10.1037/xge0001008. Epub 2021 Feb 1.
We tested whether preschool-aged children (N = 280) track an agents' choices of individuals from novel social groups (i.e., social choices) to infer an agent's social preferences and the social status of the groups. Across experiments, children saw a box containing 2 groups (red and blue toy cats). In Experiment 1, children were randomly assigned to Social Selection in which items were described as "friends," or to Object Selection in which items were described as "toys." Within each selection type, the agent selected 5 items from either a numerically common group (82% of box; selections appearing random) or a numerically rare group (18% of box; selections violating random sampling). After watching these selections, children were asked who the agent would play with among 3 individuals: 1 from the selected group, 1 from the unselected group, or 1 from a novel group. Only participants who viewed Social Selection of a numerically rare group predicted that the agent would select an individual from that group in the future. These participants also said an individual from the selected group was the "leader." Subsequent experiments further probed the Social Selection findings. Children's reasoning depended on the agent actively selecting the friends (Experiment 2), and children thought a member of the rare selected group was the leader, but not the "helper" (Experiment 3). These results illustrate that children track an agent's positive social choices to reason about that agent's social preferences and to infer the status (likelihood of being a leader) of novel social groups. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
我们测试了学龄前儿童（N=280）是否会根据代理人对来自新社交群体的个体的选择（即社会选择）来跟踪推断代理人的社会偏好和群体的社会地位。在各项实验中，孩子们看到一个盒子里装着 2 个群体（红色和蓝色玩具猫）。在实验 1 中，孩子们被随机分配到社会选择组或物体选择组。在每种选择类型中，代理人从数量较多的群体（82%的盒子；选择似乎是随机的）或数量较少的群体（18%的盒子；选择违反随机抽样）中选择 5 个物品。观看这些选择后，孩子们被问到代理人会和 3 个人中的谁一起玩：从选中的群体中选择 1 人，从未选中的群体中选择 1 人，或者从一个新群体中选择 1 人。只有观看了数量较少的群体的社会选择的参与者才会预测代理人将来会从该群体中选择一个人。这些参与者还表示，选中群体中的一个人是“领袖”。随后的实验进一步探讨了社会选择的发现。儿童的推理取决于代理人主动选择朋友（实验 2），而且儿童认为，选中的稀有群体的成员是领袖，而不是“助手”（实验 3）。这些结果表明，儿童会根据代理人的积极社会选择来推断该代理人的社会偏好，并推断新社交群体的地位（成为领袖的可能性）。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2021 APA，保留所有权利）。
