Being versus appearing smart
Children’s developing intuitions about how reputational motives guide behavior
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21301852 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kayla Good (0000-0002-1606-0855, Stanford University, corresponding author), Alex Shaw (0000-0002-8852-0179, University of Chicago) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 93 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 418-436 |
| Publication date | 2022-03-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Child Development (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0009-3920 • E-ISSN: 1467-8624 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1111/cdev.13711 |
| PMID | 35290669 |
| OpenAlex | W3212107486 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 52 |
Children engage in reputation management to appear favorably to others. The present studies explore when children use reputational motives to predict others’ behavior. Four- to 9-year-old children (N = 576; 53% female; approximately 60% White) heard stories about two kids: one who cares about being competent, and one who cares about appearing competent. Across five studies, with age, children predicted the reputationally motivated child would be more likely to lie to cover up failure (OR = 1.97) but less likely to seek help in public (vs. private; OR = 0.53) or downplay success (OR = 0.66). With age, children also liked this character less (OR = 0.56). Implications of these findings for children's reputation management and achievement motivation are discussed
Developmental psychology · Reputation · Reputation management · White (mutation) · Bullying, Victimization, and Aggression · Child and Animal Learning Development · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology
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A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality.
Even his friend said he's bad
When Helping Hurts
Children’s Intuitive Theories of Academic Performance
When Children Treat Condemnation as a Signal
Implicit Self-Theories in the Academic Domain
Impression management
Children's Differentiation Between Ingratiation and Self‐Promotion
Audience Effects on Self‐Presentation in Childhood
Children's Reasoning about Lie‐telling and Truth‐telling in Politeness Contexts
Self-Presentation when Sharing with Friends and Nonfriends
Children's explanations for self-presentational behaviour
Children's understanding of the self‐presentational strategies of ingratiation and self‐promotion
Selective skepticism
Preschoolers can attribute second-order beliefs
Sensitivity to the evaluation of others emerges by 24 months
Young children’s reputational strategies in a peer group context
Children's Evaluation of Sources of Information About Traits
Reasoning about the disclosure of success and failure to friends among children in the United States and China
When saying “I’m best” is benign
Being biased against friends to appear unbiased
Audiences' reactions to self-enhancing, self-denigrating, and accurate self-presentations
When self-presentation is constrained by the target's knowledge
| Citations per year | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |