Natural psychologists and precocious negotiators: Early understanding of the emotional consequences of social exchange

Abstract

This study investigates the early understanding of the emotional consequences involved in the violation and the completion of bilateral agreements between peers. Three- and four-year- old children listened to stories in which two characters agreed to an exchange of mutual benefit (a bargain) involving a conditional rule. They were then presented with 4 pictures as the alternative choices of the exchange outcome that would match a given emotional reaction by the characters. In order to choose the right picture, children had to track back the social antecedents of the char- acters' feelings following either a violation or a completion of their agreement. Results show that young children are very accurate in inferring that: (1) being upset is the outcome for the victim of cheating in an agreement violation, (2) 'happiness' (satisfaction) on both parties is the outcome of an agreement completion. These findings reveal an early understanding of the emotional conse- quences of social exchanges that parallels their early understanding of violations and completions of bilateral agreements. More generally, they suggest that, from its onset, the understanding of so- cial exchange by humans may recruit both their reasoning resources as natural psychologists (their mindreading system) and their reasoning skills as negotiators (their specialized mecha- nisms for cheating detection).