East China Normal University, China.
University of California, Berkeley, USA.
Cognition. 2021 May;210:104609. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104609. Epub 2021 Jan 31.
We investigate individual, developmental, and cultural differences in self-control in relation to children's changing belief in "free will" - the possibility of acting against and inhibiting strong desires. In three studies, 4- to 8-year-olds in the U.S., China, Singapore, and Peru (N = 441) answered questions to gauge their belief in free will and completed a series of self-control and inhibitory control tasks. Children across all four cultures showed predictable age-related improvements in self-control, as well as changes in their free will beliefs. Cultural context played a role in the timing of these emerging free will beliefs: Singaporean and Peruvian children's beliefs changed at later ages than Chinese and U.S. children. Critically, culture moderated the link between self-control abilities and free will beliefs: Individual differences in self-control behaviors were linked to individual differences in free will beliefs in U.S. children, but not in children from China, Singapore or Peru. There was also evidence of a causal influence of self-control performance on free will beliefs in our U.S. sample. In Study 2, a randomly assigned group of U.S. 4- and 5-year-olds who failed at two self-control tasks showed reduced belief in free will, but a group of children who completed free will questions first did not show changes to self-control. Together these results suggest that culturally-acquired causal-explanatory frameworks for action, along with observations of one's own abilities, might influence children's emerging understanding of free will.
我们研究了个体、发展和文化差异对自我控制的影响，以及这些差异与儿童不断变化的“自由意志”信念之间的关系——即对抗和抑制强烈欲望的可能性。在三项研究中，来自美国、中国、新加坡和秘鲁的 4 至 8 岁儿童（N=441）回答了一些问题，以评估他们对自由意志的信念，并完成了一系列自我控制和抑制控制任务。来自所有四个文化的儿童都表现出了可预测的与年龄相关的自我控制能力的提高，以及他们自由意志信念的变化。文化背景在这些新兴自由意志信念出现的时间上发挥了作用：新加坡和秘鲁儿童的信念变化比中国和美国儿童的信念变化出现得更晚。重要的是，文化调节了自我控制能力和自由意志信念之间的联系：美国儿童的自我控制行为个体差异与自由意志信念的个体差异有关，而中国、新加坡或秘鲁儿童则没有。我们的美国样本也有证据表明自我控制表现对自由意志信念有因果影响。在研究 2 中，一组随机分配的美国 4 岁和 5 岁儿童在两次自我控制任务中失败后，表现出对自由意志的信念降低，但一组先完成自由意志问题的儿童没有表现出自控能力的变化。这些结果表明，行动的文化习得因果解释框架，以及对自身能力的观察，可能会影响儿童对自由意志的新兴理解。
