When do kids start to care about other people's opinions? | Sara Valencia Botto

Why We Care About What Others Think

In this TED Talk, Dr. Sara Valencia Botto discusses why humans care about what others think and how we develop this trait.

The Importance of Other People's Opinions

• Humans tailor their behavior in the presence of others to garner approval.

• Humans are cognizant of what other people value and use this information to guide their behavior.

• Our concern with how other people will evaluate us is a big part of being human.

Investigating When We Become Sensitive to Others' Evaluations

• Despite caring about what others think being a big human trait, we know relatively little about when and how we come to care about the opinion of others.

• Dr. Botto designed experiments for children, usually in the form of games, to investigate when in development we become sensitive to others' evaluations.

The Robot Task Experiment

• Dr. Botto and Dr. Philippe Rochat designed a "game" called "The Robot Task" to explore when children would begin to be sensitive to the evaluation of others.

• The experiment involved showing 14 to 24-month-old infants how to activate a toy robot while assigning either a positive or negative value after pressing the remote.

• By 24 months, children are indeed sensitive to the evaluation of others, as shown by their button-pressing behavior being influenced not only by whether or not they're being watched but also by the values that the experimenter expressed towards pressing the remote.

Conclusion

• Understanding why humans care about what others think can help us better understand our own behavior and the behavior of others.

How Children's Behavior is Influenced by Values

In this talk, the speaker discusses how children's behavior is influenced by values and instructions given to them. She presents three studies that show how children respond to positive and negative values associated with objects.

Study One: The Safe Route

• Children tend to take the safest route when they do not know what would be positively or negatively evaluated.

• When the experimenter turned around, the child immediately started playing with the remote.

• The child was just looking around, waiting for a chance to play.

Study Two: Positive vs Negative Value

• When the experimenter turned around, the child immediately started playing with the negative remote.

• The child chose to press the positive remote significantly more when being watched but then switched to pressing the negative remote once they turned their back.

Study Three: Positive Experimenter vs Negative Experimenter

• Children chose to press a remote significantly more when an experimenter who expressed a positive value was watching as opposed to an experimenter who had expressed a negative value.

• This behavior is similar to how children begin showing embarrassment in situations that might elicit a negative evaluation.

Conclusion: Communicating Values

• Adults and children are sensitive to values placed on objects and behaviors.

• We communicate values without even noticing it through our subtle behaviors.

• Adults and children are effective at picking up these values.

The Power of Values in Shaping Behavior

In this section, the speaker discusses how our values shape our behavior and how we can influence the behavior of those around us through simple day-to-day interactions.

Early Development and Values

• Our ability to understand and adopt values emerges early in development.

• These values become an integral part of who we grow up to be.

Broadcasting Values

• We broadcast values in day-to-day interactions.

• It is important to contemplate on the values that we broadcast and how they might be shaping the behavior of those around us.

• Spending more time smiling at our phone than with other people broadcasts a certain value.

Shaping Behavior

• Our own behavior has been shaped by those around us, often without us realizing it.

• Parents and teachers have the privilege to shape children's behavior, but everyone has the power to shape the behavior of those around them through simple day-to-day interactions.

• Through the values we convey in these interactions, we all have the power to shape behavior.

Conclusion

• Simple day-to-day interactions are powerful tools for shaping behavior.