Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Aug 9;119(32):e2105642119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2105642119. Epub 2022 Aug 5.
We care about what others think of us and often try to present ourselves in a good light. What cognitive capacities underlie our ability to think (or even worry) about reputation, and how do these concerns manifest as strategic self-presentational behaviors? Even though the tendency to modify one's behaviors in the presence of others emerges early in life, the degree to which these behaviors reflect a rich understanding of what others think about the self has remained an open question. Bridging prior work on reputation management, communication, and theory of mind development in early childhood, here we investigate young children's ability to infer and revise others' mental representation of the self. Across four experiments, we find that 3- and 4-y-old children's decisions about to whom to communicate (Experiment 1), what to communicate (Experiments 2 and 3), and which joint activity to engage in with a partner (Experiment 4) are systematically influenced by the partner's observations of the children's own past performance. Children in these studies chose to present self-relevant information selectively and strategically when it could revise the partner's outdated, negative representation of the self. Extending research on children's ability to engage in informative communication, these results demonstrate the sophistication of early self-presentational behaviors: Even young children can draw rich inferences about what others think of them and communicate self-relevant information to revise these representations.
我们关心别人对我们的看法，并经常试图展现自己的良好形象。哪些认知能力使我们能够思考（甚至担心）声誉，以及这些担忧如何表现为策略性的自我表现行为？尽管在生命早期就出现了在他人面前改变行为的倾向，但这些行为在多大程度上反映了对他人对自我看法的深刻理解，这仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。本研究结合了声誉管理、沟通和儿童早期心理理论发展方面的先前工作，调查了幼儿推断和修正他人自我心理表征的能力。在四项实验中，我们发现 3 岁和 4 岁的儿童在决定与谁交流（实验 1）、交流什么（实验 2 和 3）以及与伙伴进行何种联合活动（实验 4）时，会受到伙伴对自身过去表现观察的系统影响。在这些研究中，当儿童的自我相关信息能够修正伙伴过时的负面自我表征时，儿童会有选择地、策略性地呈现自我相关信息。这些结果扩展了关于儿童进行信息交流能力的研究，证明了早期自我表现行为的复杂性：即使是年幼的儿童也可以对他人对他们的看法进行丰富的推断，并传达自我相关信息来修正这些表象。
