Learning to Be Unsung Heroes: Development of Reputation Management in Two Cultures

The effective management of one's reputation is an important social skill, but little is known about how it develops. This study seeks to bridge the gap by examining how children communicate about their own good deeds, among 7- to 11-year-olds in both China and Canada (total N = 378). Participants cleaned a teacher's messy office in her absence, and their responses were observed when the teacher returned. Only the Chinese children showed an age-related increase in modesty by choosing to falsely deny their own good deeds. This modest behavior was uniquely predicted by Chinese children's evaluations of modesty-related lies. The results suggest that culture-specific socialization processes influence the way children communicate with authority figures about prosocial deeds.