Work

Children expect people to accurately represent the minds of their close social partners

Year: 2024

Type: preprint

Abstract: Do children reason that people in close relationships accurately represent each other’s minds? In two experiments (total N = 123), we found that 7- to 9-year-old children from the US (i) reason that people who are close will accurately represent each other’s goals and desires and (ii) infer that people are socially close when they accurately predict each other’s emotional states. These findings suggest that children reason flexibly about mental state attributions within close relationships.

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/cqz26

Authors: Brandon Matthew Woo, Emma Yu, Ashley J Thomas

Institutions: Harvard University, University of California, Santa Barbara, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Language: English

Topic: Child and Animal Learning Development

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W4399121986

Cites: 17

Cited by:

Related to: 10