Children Use Nonverbal Cues from an Adult to Evaluate Peers

What factors contribute to children's tendency to view individuals as having different traits and abilities? The present research tested whether young children are influenced by adults' nonverbal behaviors when making inferences about peers. In Study 1, participants (5-6 years) viewed multiple videos of interactions between a 'teacher' and two 'students;' all individuals were unfamiliar to participants. In each clip, the students behaved similarly, but the teacher did not: She either smiled, nodded, touched, or shook her head at one student, and looked at the other student with a neutral expression. In Study 1, children tended to infer that students were smarter, nicer, and stronger if the teacher behaved more positively toward them. Study 2 pitted differences in the teacher's behavior against differences in the students' performance. When asked who was smarter, children selected lower-performing students who received more positive nonverbal cues from the teacher rather than higher-performing students who received less positive cues. The findings indicate that an authority figure's nonverbal behaviors can influence children's inferences about others, shedding light on one mechanism guiding young children's evaluations of people in their social world.