Social Influences on Children's Option Valuations
type: CreativeWork
description: Children use a variety of strategies to determine the relative value of the objects they encounter, ranging from simple heuristics to the integration of information from multiple sources. Do children also incorporate social information - specifically, information pertaining to others' preferences - into their object valuations? Valuation is an important component of economic exchange, and is key to assessing how resources are fairly distributed or favors reciprocated. As humans often need to make critical decisions with limited information, garnering information about value via social sources might be an adaptive strategy. This dissertation has two primary goals: (1) to develop methodology to assess value discrimination in young children, and (2) to investigate how young children's resource valuations - and subsequent preferences - might be influenced by the preferences of their peers. These goals were realized across four empirical studies. The study presented in Chapter 2 used an established resource distribution methodology, the Dictator Game, to test whether 4-year-old children's preferences were influenced by the preferences of their peers. Children observed, via video, four peers sequentially display the same preference for one of two stickers. Each peer expressed liking one sticker and disliking the other. Subsequently, in the Dictator Game, children kept more stickers their peers liked than stickers their peers disliked, suggesting that children extracted informational content about the value ofthe resources from their peers and used that to guide their own preferences. The studies presented in Chapter 3 aimed to clarify these findings, extend this research to younger children, and develop new resource distribution tasks to assess value discrimination. Three studies investigated whether 3-year-old children differentially distribute two resources (stickers) based on an a priori preference for one of the resources (Study 1), use peers' preferences (e.g., their…
abstract: Children use a variety of strategies to determine the relative value of the objects they encounter, ranging from simple heuristics to the integration of information from multiple sources. Do children also incorporate social information - specifically, information pertaining to others' preferences - into their object valuations? Valuation is an important component of economic exchange, and is key to assessing how resources are fairly distributed or favors reciprocated. As humans often need to make critical decisions with limited information, garnering information about value via social sources might be an adaptive strategy. This dissertation has two primary goals: (1) to develop methodology to assess value discrimination in young children, and (2) to investigate how young children's resource valuations - and subsequent preferences - might be influenced by the preferences of their peers. These goals were realized across four empirical studies. The study presented in Chapter 2 used an established resource distribution methodology, the Dictator Game, to test whether 4-year-old children's preferences were influenced by the preferences of their peers. Children observed, via video, four peers sequentially display the same preference for one of two stickers. Each peer expressed liking one sticker and disliking the other. Subsequently, in the Dictator Game, children kept more stickers their peers liked than stickers their peers disliked, suggesting that children extracted informational content about the value ofthe resources from their peers and used that to guide their own preferences. The studies presented in Chapter 3 aimed to clarify these findings, extend this research to younger children, and develop new resource distribution tasks to assess value discrimination. Three studies investigated whether 3-year-old children differentially distribute two resources (stickers) based on an a priori preference for one of the resources (Study 1), use peers' preferences (e.g., their…
author: Hennefield, Laura Pape
language: English (en)
keywords: children, preschool, social influence, value, Psychology
date published: 2015-05-15T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T06:12:08Z
provider: Washington University in St. Louis
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Washington University in St. Louis

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.7936/K7CN7231