Children in the US and China Value Unique Skills Even at the Expense of Conformity

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-3631685/v1

Download PDF

Article

Children in the US and China Value Unique Skills Even at the Expense of Conformity

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3631685/v1

This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License

Version 1

posted

You are reading this latest preprint version

Throughout evolution, human cooperation has not only depended on individuals conforming to majority behaviors but has also relied on unique contributions from individuals. Extensive evidence has shown that even young children conform to majority preferences and evaluate non-conformists negatively. But to what extent do children also appreciate individuality in the form of unique skills? We examined this question across four preregistered studies with 6-9-year-old children from US and China (N = 335). We found that children from the two cultures chose partners with unique skills in collaborative contexts (Studies 1–3) and actively sought to develop unique skills themselves (Study 4). Notably, children selectively valued uniqueness in skills but not personal preferences (Studies 1 and 4). These findings suggest that children appreciate unique attributes in themselves and others even when they come at the expense of conformity, shedding light on an essential psychological mechanism for promoting successful cooperation and innovation.

Scientific community and society/Social sciences/Psychology/Human behaviour

Biological sciences/Evolution/Evolutionary theory

uniqueness

skills

conformity

cooperation

partner choice

decisions

Human society is characterized by exceptionally high levels of cooperation. Even in comparison to our closest living relatives, the great apes, humans stand out for their dependence on others for surviving and thriving (Boyd & Silk, 2018; Heyes, 2018; Raihani, 2021; Tomasello, 2015). Successful cooperation in humans, especially on a large-scale, critically depends on individuals conforming to their group’s norms, rules and conventional cultural practices (Chudek & Henrich, 2011; Van Leeuwen & Haun, 2013). But this conformity is frequently in tension with another critical factor, namely the possibility of unique contributions from individuals. Extensive research has shown that humans have strong and early-emerging tendencies to conform and to harshly condemn those who fail to conform (Ahn et al., 2023; Corriveau & Harris, 2010; Haun & Tomasello, 2011; Liberman et al., 2017; Roberts et al., 2017; Schmidt et al., 2012). However, much less is known about when we instead prioritize uniqueness and individuality, both in oneself and others. Does cooperation select not only for fitting in but also for standing out? To shed light on this question, our paper aims to systematically examine children’s valuation of unique skills in collaborative contexts in both US and China.

Theoretical Background on the Valuation of Unique Skills

The value of conformity in supporting social coordination has been a common theme in theoretical work on cooperation (Chudek & Henrich, 2011; Van Leeuwen & Haun, 2013). Arguments for the valuation of unique skills stem from a related but different perspective, namely partner choice models of human cooperation. Going beyond the emphasis on “mere” coordination, partner choice models posit that (i) successful cooperation often depends on having the right partners and (ii) this gives rise to a “biological market”, where individuals compete for access to cooperative relationships (Barclay, 2013, 2016; Noë & Hammerstein, 1994). Individuals with high partner value––who possess skills that are beneficial to others (e.g., they are good at catching fish or building shelter) and who are motivated to provide those benefits––are the most competitive and sought-after (Barclay, 2013; Eisenbruch & Roney, 2017; Fiske et al., 2007; Henrich & Gil-White, 2001). Since certain skills may become saturated in the population, to rise above the competition, individuals must not only possess skills but must also possess unique skills in order to be a valued partner (Tooby & Cosmides, 1996). Importantly, this motivation will sometimes be at odds with a conformist motive to acquire the most common skills in the population.

Highlighting the importance of uniqueness in skills in the context of a biological market gives rise to two related predictions (Tooby & Cosmides, 1996). First, regarding the selection of valuable partners, individuals may exhibit a preference for potential partners with unique skills that cannot be supplied by anyone else locally. Second, concerning the recruitment of valuable partners, individuals should seek to increase their own value by selectively acquiring needed skills not possessed by others in their social environment. Importantly, these predicted patterns may apply to functional skills but not necessarily to traits unrelated to partner value (e.g., personal preferences), which may be more governed by the logic of conformity. We test these predictions across four preregistered studies with children between the ages of 6 and 9.

Developmental Evidence and Hypotheses

Little research has directly examined if children selectively choose partners based on uniqueness in skills and abilities. Research shows that children can reason sophisticatedly about their own and other’s ability by age 5 or 6 (Cimpian et al., 2017; Elliot et al., 2018; Heyman et al., 2003; Yang & Frye, 2016), and they also prefer to choose competent partners with task-relevant qualities in cooperative contexts (Droege & Stipek, 1993; Grueneisen et al., 2023; Prétôt et al., 2020). Relatedly, children this age care about presenting themselves as competent and smart to others (Asaba et al., 2022; Asaba & Gweon, 2022; Zhao et al., 2017). These findings suggest that children value skills and competence both in others and in themselves. However, it remains unclear whether children would value unique competence at the expense of conformity.

One possibility is that, as predicted by evolutionary theories of partner choice, children might highly value unique skills both in others and themselves. However, the choice of uniqueness in skills often conflicts with the majority, and it is known that children strongly value conformity to the majority in domains of preferences, opinions and judgments (Corriveau & Harris, 2010; Haun & Tomasello, 2011; Roberts et al., 2017, 2021; Sibilsky et al., 2021). Therefore, an alternative possibility is that their valuation of conformity might extend to the domain of skills. This perspective predicts that children may prefer individuals who possess the same skills as others and may prioritize developing non-unique skills themselves.

At the same time, children’s tendency to value uniqueness in skills might also depend on how much conformity is valued in their cultural context. Compared to the US cultural context, conformity is much more valued in the Chinese culture (Cohen & Kitayama, 2019; Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Conceivably, Chinese children might be less likely to value unique skills compared to their US counterparts. However, if unique skills serve essential adaptive functions, as predicted by partner choice models, it is also possible that children from both cultures may value and seek unique skills. Therefore, a robust test of the evolutionary prediction necessitates the examination of children from these diverse cultural backgrounds.

Current Research

Across four preregistered studies, we tested for the first time whether children (i) select partners with unique skills in cooperative contexts and (ii) preferentially develop unique skills themselves. Children were presented with situations in which they needed to achieve collaborative goals with other partners. We investigated whether among partners with different skills, children would preferentially choose a partner with a unique skill (Studies 1-3), as well as whether among different skills, children would preferentially seek to develop skills that no one else possessed (Study 4). We tested children between the ages of 6 and 9 years because children begin to evaluate ability in their partner choice decisions during this age period (Droege & Stipek, 1993; Prétôt et al., 2020). To explore potential cultural influences and the generalizability of the effects, we tested children from both a US American cultural context (Studies 1, 2, & 4) and a Chinese cultural context (Studies 3 & 4).

Study 1 explored whether children prefer individuals with unique skills in their partner choices.

Methods

Participants. We preregistered at least 16 children for each group between the ages of 6 and 9. Data collection was stopped when this goal was met. There were 75 children in our final sample (M age = 7.99 years, SD = 1.19 years, range = 6.00 to 9.97, male = 31, female = 44), with 61% White, 8% Black, 11% Asian, 9% Hispanic, 11% Mixed or Other. In all US studies, children were mainly recruited in a campus lab and two local museums, but also from local schools and festivals. Testing locations did not influence results reported in this paper. Most children were from middle-class families.

Design and Procedure. Children were tested individually in a quiet space in a five-minute session. To begin, the experimenter told the participants that in the game they had to find a way to survive on a deserted island. It would be cold, and they would have to find food to eat, but other kids would be there with them. Children viewed relevant stimuli through Qualtrics (see supplemental materials).

Then, each child responded to two conditions in a randomized order. In the test condition, children were introduced to three skills that would help them survive on the island: climbing trees, making fire, and catching fish. Then participants were introduced to three children who were capable of the same skill (“She can make fire”) and a fourth child who was capable of a unique skill (“She can catch fish”). Participants were randomly assigned to see either making fire or catching fish as the unique skill. In the comparison condition, children were introduced to three types of tents that would help them survive on the island: square, triangle and round tents. Participants learned that three children lived in the same type of tent, and one child lived in a different type of tent.

Participants were told that the two children who were capable of the same skill (test condition) or live in the same type of tent (comparison condition) were going to be with them on the island. They were asked to choose one of the other two kids to be on their team, as well as how much they wanted to add that child to their team (a teeny bit, a little bit, or a lot), resulting in a 6-point scale. Of major interest was whether children would be more likely to choose the unique child in the test condition than in the comparison condition. This pattern would suggest that unique attributes are particularly prized when they are unique skills rather than unique preferences.

Results

As preregistered, we analyzed children’s continuous ratings (presented in the main text) and dichotomous choices (see supplement) separately. The patterns are very similar for the two types of measures. We conducted a preregistered linear mixed effects model predicting children’s ratings as a function of condition, age group, and their interaction, with a random intercept for each participant. According to the “drop 1” function in R (likelihood ratio test comparing the full model to a model without the interaction), the interaction term did not improve model fit: F (1, 75) = 1.62, p = .21. There was a main effect of condition: children were more likely to choose the unique individual in the test condition (M = 4.68) than in the comparison condition (M = 3.80; B = 0.88, SE = 0.31, t = 2.87, p = .005, 95% CI = [0.28, 1.48]), Figure 1.

There was also a main effect of age group, B = 0.41, SE = 0.16, t = 2.65, p = .010, 95% CI = [0.11, 0.72]. Inspection of Figure 1 shows that 6-year-old children’s response pattern was different from other age groups. An examination of the age effect indicated that 6-year-olds were less likely to choose the unique individual for the test condition than older children did (B = 1.58, SE = 0.54, t = 2.92, p = .005, 95% CI = [0.50, 2.66]), while 6-year-olds and older children responded similarly to the comparison condition (B = 0.70, SE = 0.57, t = 1.22, p = .22, 95% CI = [-0.44, 1.84]).

One-sample t-tests indicated that 7-9-year-olds preferred the unique individual above mid-point in the test condition (M = 5.02, t = 6.46, p < .001) but at mid-point in the comparison condition (M = 3.95, t = 1.77, p = .08), Figure 1. In contrast, 6-year-olds chose the unique individual at midpoint levels for both the test condition (M = 3.44, t = -0.11, p = .92) and the comparison condition (M = 3.25, t = -0.44, p = 0.67). These results indicate that from age 7, children selectively prefer partners with uniqueness in skills, and their preference for uniqueness did not extend to personal preferences.

Study 1 showed that children chose individuals with unique skills, which might reflect a general preference for diversity in skills. Alternatively, it is possible that children only value unique skills that have functional meaning in the context––unique skills that contribute to the collaborative goal. Study 2 explored this possibility by presenting children with unique skills that either have functional meaning (e.g., knowing how to make fire in the island context; test condition) or no functional meaning (e.g., knowing how to draw in the island context; comparison condition) in the contexts. A second goal of Study 2 is to examine the generalizability of children’s preferences across contexts. This study included a new school setting, designed to be more familiar to participants and characterized by lower stakes than the island survival context.

Methods

Participants. We preregistered to recruit 64 children between the ages of 7 and 9. There were 67 children in our final sample (M age = 8.58 years, SD = 0.79 years, range = 7.00 to 9.89, male = 31, female = 36), with 73% White, 1% Black, 7% Asian, 4% Hispanic, 13% Mixed or Other.

Design and Procedure. The procedure was similar to Study 1. Each child responded to the test and comparison conditions in a random order. Children were randomly assigned to respond to the conditions in either the island context or to the school context. For the island context, children saw the same test condition as in Study 1, in which the unique skill (i.e., catching fish or making fire) had functional meaning for surviving on the island. The comparison condition however, differed from Study 1 in that only the non-unique skill had functional meaning (i.e., catching fish or making fire), whereas the unique skill was an art skill with no survival value (i.e., drawing).

Children who responded to the school context were introduced to the goal of creating shiny 3D artwork at a school and three art skills (i.e., drawing puzzle shapes, putting together 3D pieces, or making pieces light up). In the test condition, the unique skill was useful for creating the artwork (i.e., putting pieces together or making pieces light up), whereas in the comparison condition the unique skill was an island skill (i.e., climbing trees) with no functional meaning in the school context.

Like Study 1, in each condition, participants indicated their choice between one child with the unique skill and another child with the non-unique skill on a 6-point scale.

Results

We first conducted a preregistered linear mixed effects model predicting children’s ratings as a function of condition, with a random intercept for each participant. We found an effect of condition: children were more likely to choose the unique individual in the test condition (M = 5.16) than in the comparison condition (M = 2.87; B = 2.30, SE = 0.31, t = 7.38, p < .001, 95% CI = [1.69, 2.91]). One-sample t-tests indicated that 7-9-year-olds preferred the unique individual above mid-point in the test condition (t = 9.00, p < .001) but below mid-point in the comparison condition (t = -2.53, p = .013); that is, children preferred unique skills in the test condition but conformist skills in the comparison condition.

We then added context as a moderator to the model and found that the interaction between context and condition significantly improved model fit: F (1, 67) = 4.51, p = .036. We then conducted linear mixed effects models to examine the effect of condition effect for each context separately. We found an effect of condition for both contexts: Children were more likely to choose the unique individual in the test condition than in the comparison condition in the school context (B = 1.63, SE = 0.46, t = 3.56, p = .001, 95% CI = [0.74, 2.54]), and the tendency is even stronger in the island context (B = 2.94, SE = 0.41, t = 7.20, p < .001, 95% CI = [2.14, 3.74]), Figure 2.

We also conducted linear models to examine the effect of context in each condition. We found no effect of context in the test condition, B = -0.32, SE = 0.37, t = -0.87, p = 0.39, 95% CI = [-1.06, 0.42]. Children preferred the unique individual above mid-point in both the island context (M = 5.32, t = 7.23, p < .001) and the school context (M = 5.00. t = 5.52, p < .001). But in the comparison condition, children were more likely to choose the unique individual in the school context than in the island context, B = 0.98, SE = 0.49, t = 2.00, p = .049, 95% CI = [0.002, 1.96]. Children’s preference for the unique individual was at mid-point in the school context (M = 3.36, t = -0.37, p = .72) but below mid-point in the island context (M = 2.38, t = -3.48, p = .001), Figure 2.

These findings suggest that children selectively prefer individuals with unique skills as partners only when the unique skill serves functional ends in the collaborative context. This selective preference was stronger in the island context than in the school context but was found in both contexts.

Studies 1 and 2 found that children selectively choose individuals with unique skills as partners, especially when the unique skills meaningfully contribute to the collaborative goal. To examine if this effect is only present in a culture where individuality is emphasized, Study 3 examines the preferences of children from China––a culture that places less emphasis on uniqueness and more on conformity compared to western cultures.

Methods

Participants. We preregistered to recruit 64 children between the ages of 7 and 9. There were 68 children in our final sample (M age = 8.28 years, SD = 0.51 years, range = 7.20 to 9.33, male = 32, female = 36). All children were recruited from local schools in Shanghai, China. All children were of Han ethnicity and from local middle-class families.

Design and Procedure. We adopted the same procedure and design as in Study 2, except that we used Chinese children’s photos as stimuli (see supplemental materials). Children were tested individually in a quiet place in their schools during recess hours.

Results

We conducted a preregistered linear mixed effects model predicting Chinese children’s ratings as a function of condition, with a random intercept for each participant. We found that like US children, Chinese children were more likely to choose the unique individual in the test condition (M = 5.74) than in the comparison condition (M = 3.03; B = 2.71, SE = 0.28, t = 9.51, p < .001, 95% CI = [2.15, 3.26]). Chinese children preferred the unique individual above mid-point in the test condition (t = 18.68, p < .001) but below mid-point in the comparison condition (t = -1.82, p = .07).

Similar to Study 2, we examined the effect of the interaction between context and condition, and it did not improve model fit: F (1, 68) = 1.73, p = .19. There was no effect of context for the test condition (B = -0.16, SE = 0.24, t = -0.67, p = .51, 95% CI = [-0.64, 0.32]) or the comparison condition (B = 0.58, SE = 0.52, t = 1.14, p = .26, 95% CI = [-0.44, 1.62]). Like the US findings, in the comparison condition, Chinese children’s preference for the unique individual was at mid-point in the school context (M = 3.31, t = -0.52, p = .61) and was below mid-point in the island context (M = 2.73, t = -2.07, p = .046), Figure 3.

As preregistered, we also used condition, country, and their interaction to predict US and Chinese children’s responses. We did not find a significant effect of culture (B = 0.16, SE = 0.30, t = 0.55, p = .58, 95% CI = [-0.42, 0.75]), or an interaction between culture and condition (B = 0.41, SE = 0.42, t = 0.97, p = .34, 95% CI = [-0.42, 1.23]). Taken together, Study 3 suggests that similar to US children, Chinese children also selectively prefer individuals with unique skills as their partners, especially when the unique skill serve functional ends in the collaborative context.

Studies 1-3 suggest that US and Chinese children selectively choose partners with unique skills. Do children also prefer to learn unique skills themselves? A key prediction from partner choice models is that valuation for unique skills not only manifests in our partner choice but also in our choices to enhance our own partner value. To examine this possibility, in Study 4, we modified the partner choice paradigm in previous studies to develop a novel learning choice paradigm. We were interested in whether children from the US and China would selectively choose to learn unique skills across the island and school contexts.

Methods

Participants. We preregistered to recruit 64 children between the ages of 7 and 9 in both the US and China. There were 64 US children in our final sample (M age = 8.41 years, SD = 0.93 years, range = 7.00 to 9.92, male = 34, female = 30). Among the US children, 45% were White, 6% were Black, 17% were Hispanic, 16% were Asian, and 16% were Mixed or Other. We also recruited 64 Chinese children from the same schools as in Study 3 (M age = 8.52 years, SD = 0.92 years, range = 7.02 to 9.98, male = 31, female = 35).

Design and Procedure. Similar to Studies 2 and 3, children were randomly assigned to respond to either the island context or the school context. Participants were told that in the game they had to find a way to survive on the deserted island (island context) or to create some shiny 3D artwork (school context). Like previous studies, in the test condition, participants were introduced to three skills in each context that would be helpful for the goal. Next, participants were introduced to two children capable of one skill (e.g., catching fish), and they indicated how much they would like to learn that same skill (e.g., catching fish) or a different skill (e.g., making fire) on a 6-point scale. Like in previous studies, in the island context, catching fish and making fire were the unique and non-unique skills. In the school context, our piloting indicated that many children do not know how to make puzzles light up (the stimuli used in Study 3), so we used “putting together the top part of the object” and “putting together the bottom part of the object” as the unique and non-unique skills in this study.

In the comparison condition, participants were introduced to three different tents that they could live in (i.e., round, triangle, or square; island context), or three desks that they could use to do the artwork (i.e., round, triangle, or square; school context). Then they were introduced to two children who both chose one option (e.g., the round tent or desk), and they indicated how much they would like to choose the same option or a different option (see supplemental materials for testing stimuli).

Results

We first conducted a preregistered linear mixed effects model predicting children’s ratings as a function of condition, country, and their interaction, with a random intercept for each participant. The interaction marginally improved model fit: F (1, N = 128) = 3.74, p = .054.

We then conducted linear mixed effects models to examine the effect of condition for US and Chinese children separately. We found an effect of condition among both US children (B = 1.17, SE = 0.35, t = 3.35, p = .001, 95% CI = [0.49, 1.86]) and an even stronger condition effect among Chinese children (B = 2.14, SE = 0.36, t = 5.97, p < .001, 95% CI = [1.44, 2.84]). In the test condition, both US (M = 4.61, t = 4.64, p < .001) and Chinese children (M = 4.97, t = 6.66, p < .001) chose to learn the unique skill above midpoint levels. In the comparison condition, US children chose the unique option at midpoint (M = 3.44, t = -0.25, p = .81), whereas Chinese children chose the unique option below midpoint (M = 2.83, t = -2.37, p = .021), Figure 4.

We added context as a moderator to the models above and we did not find an effect of context among US children (B = -0.40, SE = 0.50, t = -0.80, p = .42, 95% CI = [-1.37, 0.57]) or Chinese children (B = -0.37, SE = 0.72, t = -0.72, p = .47, 95% CI = [-1.36, 0.63]). We also did not find an interaction between context and condition among the US children (B = 0.57, SE = 0.71, t = 0.80, p = .42, 95% CI = [-0.81, 1.94]) or Chinese children (B = -0.01, SE = 0.72, t = -0.02, p = .98, 95% CI = [-1.42, 1.39]). The findings suggest that US and Chinese children did not choose unique objects for personal use, but they went against the tendency of conformity and selectively chose to learn unique skills across contexts.

Across four studies, we found that children strongly preferred individuals who possess unique skills when choosing partners. This finding was reliable across three studies and two different contexts involving diverse skills (Studies 1-3). Moreover, children not only valued unique skills in others but also actively sought to acquire unique skills themselves, even at the expense of conformity to others’ abilities (Study 4). Critically, across studies children selectively valued unique skills only when they were relevant to the collaborative context (Studies 2-3), and they did not value uniqueness in non-skill domains such as personal preferences (Studies 1 and 4).

It has been theorized that natural selection in the context of biological markets may not only select for conformity, but also for irreplaceability and uniqueness (Tooby & Cosmides, 1996). For the theoretical reasons outlined in the introduction, agents can be expected to prefer partners with unique skills and for developing unique skills themselves to enhance their own value. By revealing children’s preference for partners with unique skills and their tendency to acquire unique skills, our findings provide important supporting evidence to this evolutionary prediction.

Most existing developmental research on cooperation and partner choice has focused on children’s valuation of prosociality in themselves (Engelmann et al., 2013; Engelmann & Rapp, 2018; Fu et al., 2016; Silver & Shaw, 2018) and in their partner choice decisions (Burns & Sommerville, 2014; Dahl et al., 2013; DesChamps et al., 2016; Dunfield et al., 2013; Hamlin et al., 2007; Hamlin & Van de Vondervoort, 2018; Lucca et al., 2018; Martin et al., 2022; Schlingloff et al., 2020; Tasimi & Wynn, 2016; Warneken, 2018; Yang et al., 2018). Our findings show that children also place great importance on unique competence in cooperative contexts, providing a more comprehensive understanding of our early cooperative tendences.

Many previous studies report the early-emerging conformity tendencies in children’s evaluations and behaviors. At first glance, our findings might appear inconsistent with these earlier findings. It is important to note however, that those studies do not primarily focus on skills but on opinions, preferences, or judgments regarding conventional rules. For instance, they demonstrated that children go with majority opinions when deciding which of two lines is longer or which type of food to eat (Haun & Tomasello, 2011; Roberts et al., 2017). In contrast, our research focused on skills, which take precedence in the context of a biological market system that supports cooperation. Our findings thus suggest that children’s tendency to conform or to seek uniqueness may vary depending on the domain of choice, and our work highlights skills as one important domain in which uniqueness could be more valued than conformity.

What drives children’s preference for unique skills? By definition, individuals with unique characteristics stand out and so children might favour unique skills simply because they are perceptually salient. This account predicts that children should choose unique options across domains, but we did not observe this pattern in our comparison conditions involving personal preferences. Another possibility is that children value diversity of skills, and they select partners to create the most diverse cooperative teams. But we found the boundary effect that children did not pick the partner who possessed a unique, but non-relevant, skill above chance (e.g., knowing how to draw in the context of surviving on an island), even though picking this partner would have increased skill diversity (Studies 2 and 3). Consistent with the findings that children approve of nonconformity when it benefits the group (Yang & Robert, 2024), this suggests that children value unique skills insofar as the skills have functional value in a collaborative context––such as knowing how to make fire on a deserted island––but not when the unique skill does not meaningfully contribute to a collaborative goal.

Children’s valuation of unique skills in others and themselves were robust across two cultural contexts, the US and China. Prior studies have shown that conformity is a particularly important socialization goal in many Chinese cultural contexts and that Chinese individuals are strongly motivated to adhere to cultural norms and practices (Berry et al., 1997; Cohen & Kitayama, 2019; Huang & Harris, 1973; Lee et al., 2011; but see Xiao, 1999). In the comparison conditions where children were asked for their preference for objects (e.g., which tent to live in), we indeed found that Chinese children but not US children conformed to majority preference (Studies 1 and 4). Yet, in the test conditions where the target domain was skills (Studies 1-4), children from the Chinese sample, just like children from the US sample, showed a consistent strong preference for uniqueness in skills. This suggests that the positive appraisal of social nonconformity in the context of special abilities represents a cross-culturally recurrent motivation that is not restricted to people growing up in contexts that place a higher value on individuality.

In conclusion, across four preregistered studies we have found that, in collaborative contexts, and from at least the age of 7, children value unique functional skills in themselves and others even at the expense of conformity. Evolutionary theories have predicted that successful cooperation selects not only for conformity to majority behavior and opinion (as highlighted in previous work) but also for the appreciation of uniqueness and exceptional skills. Our findings provide important evidence supporting this view, shedding light on one essential psychological mechanism that promotes successful cooperation in human society.

We have no conflict of interest to disclose.

Ahn, S., Amemiya, J., & Heyman, G. D. (2023). Children's evaluative judgements of conformers and nonconformers. Infant and Child Development, e2439. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2439
Asaba, M., & Gweon, H. (2022). Young children infer and manage what others think about them. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(32), e2105642119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2105642119
Asaba, M., Li, X., Yow, W. Q., & Gweon, H. (2022). Children selectively demonstrate their competence to a puppet when others depict it as an agent. Cognitive Development, 62, 101186. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2022.101186
Barclay, P. (2013). Strategies for cooperation in biological markets, especially for humans. Evolution and Human Behavior, 34(3), 164–175. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.02.002
Barclay, P. (2016). Biological markets and the effects of partner choice on cooperation and friendship. Current Opinion in Psychology, 7, 33–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.07.012
Berry, J. W., Poortinga, Y. H., & Pandey, J. (Eds.). (1997). Handbook of cross-cultural psychology (2nd ed). Allyn and Bacon.
Boyd, R., & Silk, J. B. (2018). How humans evolved (Eighth edition). W. W. Norton & Company.
Burns, M. P., & Sommerville, J. A. (2014). “I pick you”: The impact of fairness and race on infants’ selection of social partners. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00093
Chudek, M., & Henrich, J. (2011). Culture–gene coevolution, norm-psychology and the emergence of human prosociality. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(5), 218–226. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2011.03.003
Cimpian, A., Hammond, M. D., Mazza, G., & Corry, G. (2017). Young children’s self‐concepts include representations of abstract traits and the global self. Child Development, 88(6), 1786–1798. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12925
Cohen, D., & Kitayama, S. (Eds.). (2019). Handbook of cultural psychology (Second edition). The Guilford Press.
Corriveau, K. H., & Harris, P. L. (2010). Preschoolers (sometimes) defer to the majority in making simple perceptual judgments. Developmental Psychology, 46(2), 437–445. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017553
Dahl, A., Schuck, R. K., & Campos, J. J. (2013). Do young toddlers act on their social preferences? Developmental Psychology, 49(10), 1964–1970. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031460
DesChamps, T. D., Eason, A. E., & Sommerville, J. A. (2016). Infants associate praise and admonishment with fair and unfair Individuals. Infancy, 21(4), 478–504. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12117
Droege, K. L., & Stipek, D. J. (1993). Children’s use of dispositions to predict classmates’ behavior. Developmental Psychology, 29(4), 646–654. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.29.4.646
Dunfield, K. A., Kuhlmeier, V. A., & Murphy, L. (2013). Children’s use of communicative intent in the selection of cooperative partners. PLoS ONE, 8(4), e61804. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0061804
Eisenbruch, A. B., & Roney, J. R. (2017). The skilful and the stingy: Partner choice decisions and fairness intuitions suggest human adaptation for a biological market of cooperators. Evolutionary Psychological Science, 3(4), 364–378. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-017-0107-7
Elliot, A. J., Dweck, C. S., & Yeager, D. S. (2018). Handbook of competence and motivation: Theory and application (2e ed). Guilford press.
Engelmann, J. M., Over, H., Herrmann, E., & Tomasello, M. (2013). Young children care more about their reputation with ingroup members and potential reciprocators. Developmental Science, n/a-n/a. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12086
Engelmann, J. M., & Rapp, D. J. (2018). The influence of reputational concerns on children’s prosociality. Current Opinion in Psychology, 20, 92–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.08.024
Fincham, F. D., & Cain, K. M. (1986). Learned helplessness in humans: A developmental analysis. Developmental Review, 6(4), 301–333. https://doi.org/10.1016/0273-2297(86)90016-X
Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Glick, P. (2007). Universal dimensions of social cognition: Warmth and competence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(2), 77–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2006.11.005
Folmer, A. S., Cole, D. A., Sigal, A. B., Benbow, L. D., Satterwhite, L. F., Swygert, K. E., & Ciesla, J. A. (2008). Age-related changes in children’s understanding of effort and ability: Implications for attribution theory and motivation. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 99(2), 114–134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2007.09.003
Fu, G., Heyman, G. D., Qian, M., Guo, T., & Lee, K. (2016). Young children with a positive reputation to maintain are less likely to cheat. Developmental Science, 19(2), 275–283. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12304
Grueneisen, S., Török, G., Wathiyage Don, A., & Ruggeri, A. (2023). Young children's adaptive partner choice in cooperation and competition contexts. Child Development. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14036
Hamlin, J. K., & Van de Vondervoort, J. W. (2018). Infants’ and young children’s preferences for prosocial over antisocial others. Human Development, 61(4–5), 214–231. https://doi.org/10.1159/000492800
Hamlin, J. K., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2007). Social evaluation by preverbal infants. Nature, 450(7169), 557–559. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06288
Haun, D. B. M., & Tomasello, M. (2011). Conformity to peer pressure in preschool children. Child Development, 82(6), 1759–1767. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01666.x
Henrich, J., & Gil-White, F. J. (2001). The evolution of prestige: Freely conferred deference as a mechanism for enhancing the benefits of cultural transmission. Evolution and Human Behavior, 22(3), 165–196. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1090-5138(00)00071-4
Heyes, C. M. (2018). Cognitive gadgets: The cultural evolution of thinking. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Heyman, G. D., Gee, C. L., & Giles, J. W. (2003). Preschool children’s reasoning about ability. Child Development, 74(2), 516–534. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.7402013
Huang, L. C., & Harris, M. B. (1973). Conformity in Chinese and Americans: A field experiment. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 4(4), 427–434. https://doi.org/10.1177/002202217300400404
Lee, J. A., Soutar, G. N., Daly, T. M., & Louviere, J. J. (2011). Schwartz values clusters in the United States and China. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42(2), 234–252. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022110396867
Liberman, Z., Woodward, A. L., & Kinzler, K. D. (2017). The origins of social categorization. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21(7), 556–568. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2017.04.004
Lucca, K., Pospisil, J., & Sommerville, J. A. (2018). Fairness informs social decision making in infancy. PLOS ONE, 13(2), e0192848. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0192848
Manrique, H. M., Zeidler, H., Roberts, G., Barclay, P., Walker, M., Samu, F., Fariña, A., Bshary, R., & Raihani, N. (2021). The psychological foundations of reputation-based cooperation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 376(1838), 20200287. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0287
Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224–253. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.98.2.224
Martin, J. W., Leddy, K., Young, L., & McAuliffe, K. (2022). An earlier role for intent in children’s partner choice versus punishment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151(3), 597–612. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001093
Nicholls, J. G., & Miller, A. T. (1984). Reasoning about the ability of self and others: A developmental study. Child Development, 55(6), 1990. https://doi.org/10.2307/1129774
Noë, R., & Hammerstein, P. (1994). Biological markets: Supply and demand determine the effect of partner choice in cooperation, mutualism and mating. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 35(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00167053
Prétôt, L., Gonzalez, G., & McAuliffe, K. (2020). Children avoid inefficient but fair partners in a cooperative game. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 10511. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-65452-9
Raihani, N. (2021). The social instinct: How cooperation shaped the world (First U.S. edition). St. Martin’s Press.
Rholes, W. S., Blackwell, J., Jordan, C., & Walters, C. (1980). A developmental study of learned helplessness. Developmental Psychology, 16(6), 616–624. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.16.6.616
Roberts, G., Raihani, N., Bshary, R., Manrique, H. M., Farina, A., Samu, F., & Barclay, P. (2021). The benefits of being seen to help others: Indirect reciprocity and reputation-based partner choice. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 376(1838), 20200290. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0290
Roberts, S. O., Gelman, S. A., & Ho, A. K. (2017). So it is, so it shall be: Group regularities license children’s prescriptive judgments. Cognitive Science, 41, 576–600. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12443
Roberts, S. O., Ho, A. K., & Gelman, S. A. (2021). Should individuals think like their group? A Descriptive‐to‐prescriptive tendency toward group‐based beliefs. Child Development, 92(2). https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13448
Schlingloff, L., Csibra, G., & Tatone, D. (2020). Do 15-month-old infants prefer helpers? A replication of Hamlin et al . (2007). Royal Society Open Science, 7(4), 191795. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.191795
Schmidt, M. F. H., Rakoczy, H., & Tomasello, M. (2012). Young children enforce social norms selectively depending on the violator’s group affiliation. Cognition, 124(3), 325–333. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2012.06.004
Sibilsky, A., Colleran, H., McElreath, R., & Haun, D. B. M. (2021). Conformity decreases throughout middle childhood among ni-Vanuatu children: An intracultural comparison. Developmental Psychology, 57(9), 1497–1509. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001234
Silver, I. M., & Shaw, A. (2018). Pint-sized public relations: The development of reputation management. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(4), 277–279. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.01.006
Sterelny, K. (2014). The evolved apprentice: How evolution made humans unique (1st paperback edition). The MIT Press.
Tasimi, A., & Wynn, K. (2016). Costly rejection of wrongdoers by infants and children. Cognition, 151, 76–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2016.03.004
Tomasello, M. (2015). A natural history of human morality. Harvard University Press.
Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1996). Friendship and the banker’s paradox: Other pathways to the evolution of adaptations for altruism. In Evolution of social behaviour patterns in primates and man. Oxford Univ. Press.
Van Leeuwen, E. J. C., & Haun, D. B. M. (2013). Conformity in nonhuman primates: Fad or fact? Evolution and Human Behavior, 34(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2012.07.005
Warneken, F. (2018). How children solve the two challenges of cooperation. Annual Review of Psychology, 69(1), 205–229. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011813
Xiao, H. (1999). Independence and obedience: An analysis of child socialization values in the United States and China. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 30(4), 641–657. https://doi.org/10.3138/jcfs.30.4.641
Yang, F., Choi, Y.-J., Misch, A., Yang, X., & Dunham, Y. (2018). In defense of the commons: Young children negatively evaluate and sanction free riders. Psychological Science, 29(10), 1598–1611. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618779061
Yang, F., & Frye, D. (2016). Early understanding of ability. Cognitive Development, 38, 49–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2016.01.003
Yang, F., & Roberts, S. O. (2024). Condemned or valued: Young children evaluate nonconformity based on nonconformists' group orientations. Cognition, 242, 105660. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105660
Zhao, L., Heyman, G. D., Chen, L., & Lee, K. (2017). Praising young children for being smart promotes cheating. Psychological Science, 28(12), 1868–1870. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617721529

There is NO Competing Interest.

SupplementalMaterials.docx

Download PDF

Version 1

posted

You are reading this latest preprint version

Children in the US and China Value Unique Skills Even at the Expense of Conformity

Status:

Version 1

Abstract

Figures

Introduction

Study 1

Study 2

Study 3

Study 4

General Discussion

Declarations

References

Additional Declarations

Supplementary Files

Status:

Version 1