Local or foreign? Flexibility in children's preference for similar others

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Children exhibit strong social preferences for individuals who share similar characteristics like language, accent, and race.
• Existing research highlights in-group favoritism and the influence of similarity on social bonding in early development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether children's social preferences for similar others change when the context shifts to information seeking.
• To examine the flexibility of children's preference for similarity based on the social judgment being made.

Main Methods:

• Three experiments were conducted with 4- to 6-year-old children and adults.
• Participants were presented with pairs of characters, differing in locality (local vs. foreign) and associated characteristics.
• Judgments were made regarding liking and willingness to learn from characters.

Main Results:

• Children showed no preference for liking based on similarity in one experiment but preferred foreign characters when choosing whom to learn from.
• Both children and adults preferred local characters when asked about liking, but this preference decreased when choosing whom to learn about.
• The findings indicate that similarity-based preferences are context-dependent.

Conclusions:

• Children's social preferences are not rigid and can be influenced by the specific social context or task.
• The tendency to prefer similar others can be modulated when the goal is to acquire new information.
• This research underscores the dynamic nature of social cognition in children.