Overheard evaluative comments can affect young children's effort.

Abstract

Children stand to benefit from directing their efforts in ways that are socially valued, and this requires them to identify the behaviors that are likely to be seen as valuable. A key source of information for children, and the focus of the present research, is the evaluative comments about other people that they overhear. Participants were 5-year-old Chinese children (total N = 180 across four studies; 96 boys), and effort was operationalized as a willingness to wait. In Study 1, participants who overheard a positive comment about another child's waiting behavior waited longer than children in a control condition. Surprisingly, in Study 2, an overheard comment that described another child's waiting behavior as not smart also led to a high level of waiting. In contrast, in Study 3, a nonevaluative comment about another child's waiting behavior had no effect on children's waiting, nor did a global negative comment about another child's waiting behavior in Study 4. Taken together, these results shed light on the mechanisms underlying children's regulation of effort and the role of overheard evaluative comments in the socialization process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).