La insatisfacción de la sed, la expresión de la carencia

Considering reputation and social influence more broadly within a developmental context might help to determine why people are affected by the presence of others: what, developmentally, leads individuals to care about what others think of them? There are two possible competing explanations of how reputation develops, which may help to answer this question. First, there is the contention that reputation is an

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intrinsic drive from a young age. Rochat (2009) theorises that it is through fearing what others think of us that we come to define the self – that people are conscious of the self precisely because they are conscious of what others think. Accordingly, a fear of social rejection develops which drives people to act in certain ways, such as conforming. Rochat, Broesch and Jayne (2012) found that when they created a norm of having a sticker on one’s forehead (by surreptitiously putting stickers on the child’s mother and the experimenter) 2-year-old children were more reluctant to

remove the sticker on their own head when they saw their reflection in a mirror. Children who did not witness this norm did not exhibit this behaviour. The authors suggest that this shows that even children as young as 2 years old attempt to adjust to perceived norms and that they do this due to an intrinsic drive to fit in with others.

Proponents of the Terror Management Theory (Pyszczynski, Greenberg & Solomon, 1997) also propose this inherent fear and subsequent reputation management. Thus, from a young age there is a need to manage reputation in front of others in order to avoid rejection and satisfy the need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Such theorising may fit with social motivation being the primary mechanism behind reputation management. From a young age, being viewed positively by others is something children find rewarding and strive towards, and subsequently develop the skills necessary to achieve a good reputation.

Other theorists, however, argue against the idea of an intrinsic drive to manage reputation. Instead, reputation management is proposed to develop later in childhood as children learn the norms of their social group and culture (Hepach, Vaish &

Tomasello, 2012). Subsequently, children learn what is socially acceptable (or not) in order to know that they should be managing their reputation in accordance with such norms. This theory may necessitate ToM. Banerjee’s (2002a) work on self-

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presentation in childhood suggests that ToM abilities are correlated with children’s

understanding of self-presentational behaviours. Banerjee (2002a, 2002b), however, highlights a need for both ToM abilities and motivation – children need to be able to represent what others think of them and be motivated to manage this. Following this, it may be the case that representational ability precedes the motivation to manage reputation.

Considering some of the preceding developmental steps before reputation

management first occurs may be useful for conceptualising its development. Once children become self-aware, around the age of 2 (Amsterdam, 1972), they soon demonstrate self-conscious emotions, such as embarrassment and pride (Lewis, Sullivan, Stanger & Weiss, 1989). Such emotions indicate that the child is aware that the self is under scrutiny from others (Lewis, 1991) and an audience appears to be an important factor in the display of embarrassment and pride (Seidner, Stipek & Feshbach, 1988), indicating a possible rudimentary awareness of reputation. Furthermore, from 5 years of age children start to adopt behaviours which may be designed to influence others, including ingratiating behaviours like flattery (Fu & Lee, 2007). Feasibly, these behaviours could form part of the development of reputation management.

As mentioned previously, reputation management often manifests itself in prosocial acts, such that individuals might act prosocially to improve their reputation. Children appear to be prosocial from a very young age, around 8 months old (Hay, 1994). For example, 8-month-old children will altruistically help an experimenter to achieve a goal (Warneken & Tomasello, 2006). Such evidence is thought to point towards an early disposition towards prosociality. Yet, it is unclear what drives such behaviour: whether young children are prosocial for the sake of helping others or to ultimately

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gain something for the self. Infants may start life being naturally prosocial, but at some point in development prosocial behaviour may become selective and potentially underlain with ulterior motives – such as to obtain a good reputation (Sebastian-Enesco, Hernandez-Lloreda & Colmenares, 2013).

Young children may also have knowledge of others’ reputations: 3-year-old children choose partners who are helpful and cooperative over those who are not (Dunfield, Kuhlmeier, & Murphy, 2013; Melis, Altrichter & Tomasello, 2013; Warneken, Lohse, Melis & Tomasello, 2011) and 4-year-olds trust accurate informants over ignorant speakers (Koenig & Harris, 2005), suggesting that preschoolers may be able to utilise reputational information for partner choice. Meristo and Surian (2013) used a violation of expectation paradigm with 10-month-old children and found that infants looked longer when a character helped another character who they had just witnessed being unfair, as the infants expected the character to be punished for being unfair, not to be helped. Further, Hamlin, Wynn, Bloom & Mahajan (2011; see also Kenward & Dahl, 2011) discovered that 8-month-old infants preferred a puppet who punished an antisocial puppet. However, these studies do not show evidence of an active process of reputation management – rather, that young children may have an awareness of reputation before managing their reputation.

Recent evidence directly testing reputation management in children suggests that reputation management can occur from 5 years of age. Leimgruber et al. (2012) found that 5-year-old children could target their generosity dependent on the

knowledge of the child they were sharing with. In their study, children could receive or send stickers to another child. Even if the receiver could observe the sender allocating stickers, the sender could place the stickers in opaque or transparent containers. When the containers were opaque – so only the sender would know how

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many stickers were inside – 5-year-old children acting as senders were significantly less generous than if the containers were transparent. Leimgruber et al. (2012) claimed that 5-years-olds are sensitive to reputational cues such as the transparency of their actions, and are motivated not by an intrinsic drive to be prosocial but an extrinsic need to appear prosocial. They suggest that this tendency occurs before any explicit understanding of reputation.

Further evidence supports the idea of reputation management from 5 years of age. In a game where children were given the opportunity to share or to steal another child’s

stickers to complete a picture, Engelmann et al. (2012) found that more sharing and less stealing occurred when children were observed by a peer. Yet children do not require a peer to be present in order to manage reputation. Piazza, Bering and Ingram (2011) found that children aged 5 to 9 years cheated less when they believed an invisible person was observing them. Engelmann et al. (2012) argue that the development of the ability to manage reputation is a relatively slow process, which develops as children have more peer experiences, leading to older children and adolescents developing a particular concern for reputation as group belonging becomes of upmost importance.

Further, 6-year-old children can operate a “veil of fairness” (Shaw, Montinari,

Piovesan, Olson, Gino & Norton, 2014). In Shaw et al.’s (2014) study, children could decide if they wanted to choose a coin toss to assign good or bad prizes for

themselves and for another child, or they could choose the prize they wanted without implementing the coin toss. Most children from the age of 9 performed the coin toss over taking a prize immediately for themselves. However, children were allowed to check the result of their coin toss alone. For those who had chosen the coin toss, more children – including 6-year-olds – than would be expected by chance reported

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that they had won the toss and thus won the good prize. It seems that even at this age, children will attempt to project an image of being a fair individual.

Shaw et al. (2013) suggest that there are two potential explanations as to why people manage reputation – first, that they want to avoid being excluded for being

ungenerous, and second, to seek out opportunities to promote social status. Even at a relatively young age, children form social groups and are sensitive to their in-group (Schmidt, Rakoczy & Tomasello, 2012), demonstrating the need to belong to part of a group: often suggested as an intrinsic human motivation (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Being part of a group is thought to have positive outcomes for children’s learning – often, they work better in a group that they identify with (Master & Walton, 2013). Appreciating how and why typical children are affected by other people, as this thesis intends to examine, is vital for understanding a child’s behaviour within social contexts.

Our understanding of reputation management could also be enhanced by considering a population of individuals who have difficulties with social communication, namely, individuals with autism.