Young children understand how social connections affect what people know about each other

Read the full article See related articles

Listed in

This article is not in any list yet, why not save it to one of your lists.
Log in to save this article

Abstract

An unwritten expectation in our everyday social interactions is that inti-mate personal information about someone—“insider knowledge”—is usuallyconfined within close relationships. For example, it would be odd, or evenunsettling, if a stranger knew about your favorite movie. Such expectationsabout who knows what about whom is a cornerstone of complex social behav-ior that reflects a rich understanding of how social connections shape whatpeople know about each other. Drawing on parental report (Study 1) as wellas a novel experimental approach using controlled but naturalistic conversa-tions (Study 2 & 3), here we demonstrate that 4- to 5-year-old children canrapidly infer who has insider knowledge about people. Children reported be-ing surprised when someone possessed personal knowledge misaligned withtheir relationships, such as a stranger knowing their favorite food or theirown parent knowing a stranger’s favorite movie. Children could also explainhow someone might have acquired that knowledge, either through first-handobservation or second-hand sources. These findings not only demonstratean early-emerging understanding of how individual minds are shaped in thecontext of their relationships and social networks, but also a remarkablyprecocious ability to deploy such understanding in real-time interactions todetect and explain anomalies in what people know about each other.

Article activity feed