How Do Young Children Manage Their Reputation among Peers?

Abstract

Young children’s reputation management is closely related to their social development. The purpose of our study is to examine the interaction between theory of mind and partner choice on children’s reputation management. Participants consisted of 270 children who were 3 to 5 years old. First, we measured participants’ theory of mind capabilities using the unexpected location task and unexpected content task and then randomly divided the participants into the control group, non-partner–choice group, and partner-choice group. We measured reputation management by comparing children’s willingness to share and sharing behavior between these groups. The findings are as follows: (1) Children from ages 3 to 5 demonstrated reputation management, and their reputation management followed a significant developmental trend. The reputation management of 4- to 5-year-old children was significantly better than that of 3-year-old children. (2) Scores on the theory of mind tasks positively predicted children’s reputation management. (3) Partner choice affected children’s reputation management. In the partner-choice group, children’s reputation management was more apparent. (4) Partner choice did moderate the relationship between theory of mind and children’s reputation management. In the partner-choice group, theory of mind had a stronger predictive effect on children’s reputation management.