ERIC Number: EJ1219777
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Jul
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0012-1649
EISSN: N/A
Children Use Targets' Facial Appearance to Guide and Predict Social Behavior
Charlesworth, Tessa E. S.; Hudson, Sa-kiera T. J.; Cogsdill, Emily J.; Spelke, Elizabeth S.; Banaji, Mahzarin R.
Developmental Psychology, v55 n7 p1400-1413 Jul 2019
Humans possess a tendency to rapidly and consistently make character evaluations from mere facial appearance. Recent work shows that this tendency emerges surprisingly early: children as young as 3-years-old provide adult-like assessments of others on character attributes such as "nice," "strong," and "smart" based only on subtle variations in targets' face shape and physiognomy (i.e., latent face-traits). The present research examined the behavioral consequences of children's face-trait judgments by asking whether, and if so when in development, the appearance of face-traits also (a) shapes children's judgments "of" targets' behaviors and (b) guides children's behavior "toward" targets. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that, by 3 years of age, children used facial features in character evaluations but not in judgments of targets' behavior, whereas by 5 years of age, children reliably made both character and behavior judgments from face-traits. Age-related change in behavior judgments was also observed in children's own behaviors "toward" targets: Experiments 3 and 4 showed that, by age 5 (but not earlier), children were more likely to give gifts to targets with trustworthy and submissive-looking faces (Experiment 3) and showed concordance between their character evaluations and gift-giving behaviors (Experiment 4). These findings newly suggest that, although children may rapidly make character evaluations from face-trait appearance, predicting and performing social behaviors based on face-traits may require more developed and specific understanding of traits and their relationships to behaviors. Nevertheless, by kindergarten, even relatively arbitrary and subtle face-traits appear to have meaningful consequences in shaping children's social judgments and interactions.
Descriptors: Human Body, Personality Traits, Physical Characteristics, Decision Making, Child Behavior, Developmental Stages, Preschool Children, Trust (Psychology), Correlation, Kindergarten, Social Behavior, Interpersonal Competence, Inferences, Social Development, Cognitive Development, Visual Stimuli, Laptop Computers, Age Differences, Cues, Prosocial Behavior, Meta Analysis
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Early Childhood Education; Elementary Education; Kindergarten; Primary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A