Asaba Mika, Wu Yang, Carrillo Brandon, Gweon Hyowon
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Open Mind (Camb). 2025 Jul 7;9:825-843. doi: 10.1162/opmi.a.2. eCollection 2025.
How do we learn who is good at what? Building on the idea that humans draw rich inferences from others' emotional expressions, here we ask whether others' surprised reactions to performance outcomes can elicit inferences about competence. Across three experiments, participants were asked to choose "who is better" in scenarios where two students performed identically on the same task but their teacher expressed surprise to only one of them. In Experiment 1 ( = 60, adults) and Experiment 2 ( = 90, 6- to 8-year-old children), participants' responses were modulated by not only the students' performance outcomes (success or failure) but also the teacher's response to the outcomes (surprise or no surprise). Specifically, participants preferentially chose the student who did not elicit the teacher's surprise as more competent when both students succeeded, but chose the student who elicited surprise when both failed. Experiment 3a ( = 150, 4- to 8-year-olds) replicated this pattern in 6- to 8-year-olds as a group-but not in 4- to 5-year-olds-with increasing robustness with age. Finally, this pattern was significantly reduced in Experiment 3b where the teacher's surprise was directed at an irrelevant event rather than the student's performance ( = 90, 6- to 8-year-olds). Taken together, these results suggest that even non-valenced emotional reactions to performance outcomes-being surprised at someone's success or failure-can inform inferences about valenced qualities such as competence. More broadly, the current findings demonstrate that emotional expressions we observe in our daily lives can lead to nuanced yet consequential social judgments.
我们如何了解谁擅长什么？基于人类能从他人的情感表达中得出丰富推断这一观点，在此我们探讨他人对表现结果的惊讶反应是否能引发关于能力的推断。在三项实验中，参与者被要求在这样的情境中选择“谁更优秀”：两名学生在同一任务上表现相同，但他们的老师只对其中一人表示了惊讶。在实验1（ = 60，成年人）和实验2（ = 90，6至8岁儿童）中，参与者的反应不仅受到学生表现结果（成功或失败）的调节，还受到老师对结果的反应（惊讶或无惊讶）的调节。具体而言，当两名学生都成功时，参与者优先选择未引发老师惊讶的学生，认为其更有能力；但当两人都失败时，参与者选择引发惊讶的学生。实验3a（ = 150，4至8岁儿童）在6至8岁儿童群体中重现了这一模式，但在4至5岁儿童中未重现，且随着年龄增长，这种模式愈发明显。最后，在实验3b中，当老师的惊讶指向一个无关事件而非学生的表现时（ = 90，6至8岁儿童），这种模式显著减弱。综合来看，这些结果表明，即使是对表现结果的无情感倾向的情绪反应——对某人的成功或失败感到惊讶——也能为关于能力等有情感倾向的特质的推断提供信息。更广泛地说，当前的研究结果表明，我们在日常生活中观察到的情感表达会导致细微但重要的社会判断。
