Youth Develop Competitive Spirit after Learning Situational Motives

According to developmental psychologists, age four is an important milestone as this is when children begin to understand that people have different perspectives.

Researchers from the University of Warwick and University of Salzburg found most children under four did not have a developed understanding of the fact that what someone intentionally does depends on their take on the situation.

For the study, the researchers studied 71 children aged between 3 and 5 years old. They first tested the children to assess whether they understood that people sometimes act on the basis of false beliefs.

Johannes Roessler, Ph.D., from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, said: “In the classical ‘false belief task’, children watch a boy put some chocolate in a drawer and go off to play.

“Someone comes along and moves the chocolate to the cupboard. The experimenter then asks children where the boy will go to retrieve his chocolate. Children under the age of 4 tend to predict that he will go straight to the cupboard, because that is where the chocolate now is — even though the boy had no means of knowing this!

“Older children tend to predict that he will go to the drawer, which is the correct answer because the boy believes the chocolate to be in the drawer. Thus younger children seem to lack a developed understanding that people’s intentional actions reflect their perspective (beliefs) on how best to accomplish their goals.”

The researchers then wanted to explore young children’s understanding of other people’s goals: Do they understand that an actor’s goals reflect his or her perspective on what’s desirable?

To do this, the team set up a game for the children. They each had a vertical stand and were told they had to throw a die and then put the corresponding number of beads on their stand. The aim of the game was to be the first to fill their stand with beads, taking them either from the central basket or from other players’ stands.

Roessler said they wanted to see if the children would take beads from the basket (neutral move) or from another player (a competitive or “poaching” move).

The point of taking beads from another player’s stand is of course not just to further one’s own goal (to fill one’s stand) but also to foil the other player’s attempt to reach his or her goal (to fill his or her own stand).

The intentional use of poaching moves then, may be expected to show an understanding that the two players have different, and conflicting, goals, i.e. different perspectives on which outcome is desirable.

The results showed that very few children who failed the false belief task showed any tendency to engage in competitive poaching moves. This was so even when these children suffered from their opponent’s poaching moves: they would not “retaliate.”

Researchers believe this last finding is especially significant. If children understood the goal informing the other’s poaching moves, one would expect them, at least occasionally, to respond in kind.

“The ‘four years of age’ rule isn’t hard and fast,” Roessler said. “What’s important is not the absolute age of the child, but the fact that those who do not understand how intentional action can be informed by false beliefs also tend to struggle with the idea of competition.”

Source: University of Warwick

Young boy smiling photo by shutterstock.

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