Emergence and Cognitive Correlates of Evaluative Audience Perception Open Access

Abstract

For the past few decades, research has documented how reputational concerns change adults’ and children’s behavior across contexts. For instance, in public, but not in private, adults and children are significantly more generous, conform to the opinion of the majority, and make explicit attempts to manage their reputation. Clearly, the concern for others’ potential evaluations influence much of human behavior. However, despite this concern being central to human psychology, little is known about its ontogeny. In particular, when do children begin to show first signs of a concern for the potential evaluation of others, what we refer to here as evaluative audience perception? And what does it take to develop such a concern? Using a developmental perspective, the present dissertation explored potential social-cognitive abilities — including children’s objectified sense of self, their theory of mind, and their norm understanding — that might predict the emergence of evaluative audience perception in 14- to 27-month-old children (N = 59). Specifically, we hypothesized that if these three social-cognitive abilities are potential pre-requisites of evaluative audience perception, then children who showed all three social-cognitive abilities would be more likely to strategically modify their behavior based on the previously demonstrated values of the experimenter, as well as her relative attention (looking versus not looking at the child). In support of this hypothesis, results showed that only children who displayed theory of mind, an objectified sense of self, and normativity, strategically modified their behavior depending on whether they were being observed. In particular, we found that — independent of age, general cognitive competency, or temperament  — children who demonstrated all three social-cognitive abilities were significantly more likely to reproduce an outcome that had been positively valued by the experimenter when the experimenter was watching, but then chose to reproduce an outcome that had been negatively valued by the experimenter once the experimenter had turned her back. On the whole, this dissertation sheds light on a potential cognitive mechanism underlying the human concern for reputation.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION 1

Reputational concern in adults and children2

Evaluative audience perception as the foundation for reputation4

Emergence of evaluative audience perception in the second year7

Cognitive correlates of evaluative audience perception8

The present study21

Hypotheses24

METHOD25

Participants25

Measures and Procedures25

Coding35

Scoring of social-cognitive abilities38

Reliability38

Planned analyses38

RESULTS39

Descriptive statistics and task relations39

Preliminary analyses44

Age and evaluative audience perception44

Relation between social-cognitive competency and evaluative audience perception45

Relation between spatial task and evaluative audience perception45 

Post hoc analyses46

DISCUSSION47

Plausible developmental models49

Implications52

Limitations and future directions55

CONCLUSION57

REFERENCES59

TABLES72

Table 1. Summary of Tasks and Cognitive Measures 72

Table 2. Descriptive Statistics for Robot Task 1 and 273

Table 3. Descriptive Statistics and Relations of Cognitive Measures74

Table 4. Descriptive Statistics for Questionnaires and Control Measures75

FIGURES76

Figure 1. Bird’s Eye-view of Experimental Set-up76

Figure 2. Order of Tasks Administered in Testing Session77

Figure 3. Button-Pressing Behavior Across Social-Cognitive Groups 78

Figure 3. Potential Developmental Models of Evaluative Audience Perception79

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Psychology
Subfield / Discipline	Cognition and Development
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Experimental
Keyword	Reputation Social development Evaluative audience perception Cognitive correlates
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Rochat, Philippe, Emory University
Committee Members	Fivush, Robyn, Emory University Lourenco, Stella, Emory University Walker, Elaine, Emory University de Waal, Frans, Emory University

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