Small Children Do Care About What Others Think

Children at a very young age are ready to impress others around them based on their value. They are ready to wait for their reward or gratification, which will benefit them positively in the long run.

The "marshmallow test" involves young children. In this test, young children are rewarded immediately with a small reward (one marshmallow), or would probably get a bigger reward (two marshmallows).

The ability to wait for reward or a delay-of-gratification is associated with a range of positive life outcomes.

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‘The response of children to situations, starting from a very young age could be based on what people around them value, suggesting that their desire to impress is strong and can motivate human behavior.’
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A new study published in the journal Psychological Science concludes that children are ready to wait longer for their reward, especially when told that their teacher would know for how long they wait.

According to lead study author Gail Heyman, the marshmallow test assesses self-control and another important skill: the awareness of what other people value. Children who are ready to wait longer for gratification, care more about what other people value.

The researchers from the UC San Diego and Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, conducted two experiments with a total of 273 children in the age group of 3- to 4-years.

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Children were told that they could either earn a small reward immediately or wait for a bigger one. They were assigned to either one of the three groups with conditions, a 'teacher' condition where they were told that their teacher would be informed about their wait-period . A 'peer condition, in which they were told that a classmate would find out how long they wait, or a 'standard' condition with no special instructions.

The results showed that children in the teacher and peer groups waited longer compared to the standard group. They were ready to wait twice as long in the teacher condition as compared to the peer condition.

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Children make a cost-benefit analysis of the possibility of getting a social reward in the form of a boost to their reputation, when they decide to wait.

The researchers had thought that 3- and 4-year-olds are too young to care about what other people think of them, but instead, they found that the desire to impress others is strong even at a very young age.

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"The children waited longer in the teacher and peer conditions even though no one directly told them that it's good to wait longer," said Heyman. "We believe that children are good at making these kinds of inferences because they are constantly on the lookout for cues about what people around the value. This may take the form of carefully listening to the evaluative comments that parents and teachers make, or noticing what kinds of people and topics are getting attention in the media."

Source-Medindia