Emphasizing others' persistence can promote unwarranted social inferences in children and adults

People often hear stories about individuals who persist to overcome their constraints. While these stories can be motivating, emphasizing others' persistence may promote unwarranted judgments about constrained individuals who do not persist. Using a developmental social inference task (Study 1a: n = 124 U.S. children, 5-12 years of age; Study 1b: n = 135 and Study 2: n = 120 U.S. adults), the present research tested whether persistence stories lead people to infer that a constrained individual who does not persist, and instead accepts the lower-quality option that is available to them, prefers it over a higher-quality option that is out of reach. Study 1 found evidence for this effect in children (1a) and adults (1b). Even persistence stories about failed outcomes, which emphasize how difficult it would have been to get the higher-quality option, had this effect. Study 2 found that the effect generalized to adults' judgments about an individual facing a different type of constraint from those mentioned in the initial stories. Taken together, emphasizing others' persistence may encourage unwarranted judgments about individuals who are still constrained to lower-quality options. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).