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Unlocking the Secrets of Childhood Friendships: The Role of Secret Sharing in Children’s Friendship Predictions
Unlocking the Secrets of Childhood Friendships: The Role of Secret Sharing in Children’s Friendship Predictions
Written by: Shaneene Heupel
October 23, 2023
Friendships are like the threads that weave the fabric of our lives. They begin to take form quite early in our lives and play a huge role in shaping our experiences and defining who we are. In a past blog post titled "Like Peas in a Pod: What Do Preschoolers Understand About Friendship?" we dove into the fascinating world of how children perceive and understand friendships through proximity, similarities, and pro social interactions. In this blog post, we are going to take a deeper dive into the realm of childhood friendships and explore another way children seem to recognize friendships: secret sharing.
As adults, we know that sharing secrets is an intimate act reserved for those we trust deeply. But when do children start recognizing the significance of secret sharing in building and maintaining friendships? A recent research paper titled "Secret to Friendship: Children Make Inferences About Friendship Based on Secret Sharing" delves into this question.
The study involved 452 children aged 3 to 12. Children were presented with a series of scenarios to gauge their understanding of secret sharing as a friendship indicator.
Results
Friendship recognition through secret sharing: Children aged 6 and above strongly associated secret sharing with friendship, recognizing that sharing secrets signified a closer bond than sharing material things.
Secrets vs. Facts: Older children, again aged 6 and above, demonstrated a clear preference for secret sharing over sharing factual information when it came to gauging friendship.
Secrets vs. Team Membership: In the eyes of 6- to 8-year-olds, secret sharing was considered just as valid a cue for friendship as being part of the same team. Older children aged 9 to 12, rated secret sharing over team membership as a marker of friendship.
Understanding of the word "secret": The study also investigated whether children's understanding of secret sharing extended beyond the word "secret" itself. Results showed that children aged 6 and above associated the sharing of private information with friendship, indicating a deeper understanding of the concept.
Younger Children's Understanding: Even in the 3 to 5 age group, children demonstrated some understanding of the link between secret sharing and friendship. Although less developed compared to older children, they expected secrets to be selectively shared with friends.
The study described above demonstrates that, by the age of 6, children begin to recognize that sharing secrets symbolizes trust and friendship. These results suggests that children above the age of 6 understand the social significance of secrets and use them as cues to predict friendships.
Interested in the original research?
Liberman, Z., & Shaw, A. (2018). Secret to friendship: Children make inferences about friendship based on secret sharing. Developmental psychology, 54(11), 2139.
To a Tee! Children are natural rule-followers and view conformity more positively
To a Tee! Children are natural rule-followers and view conformity more positively
Written by: Amer Hamad Al-Amry
May 8th, 2023
Conformity is compliance with the majority in behaving or forming opinions, and it’s the case in most humans, both adults and children. Conformity also extends to animals like monkeys, birds, fish, and even fruit flies! In fact, this tendency to conform is so strong that many studies report people would choose to agree with the majority even if it doesn’t match their personal beliefs. Scholars say this could be the case due to many reasons, such as a deep-rooted need to learn by following what others do, an effort to participate in our societies and socialize, or an uncertainty in our own judgements.
In addition to that, children also favour following rules and instructions that are put in place. In fact, children follow instructions even if they don’t make sense at all! In one study, a team of researchers gathered a group of chimpanzees and (separately) a group of children, and showed each of them a demonstration on how to get a prize out of a box, but included extra steps, and made it so that these extra steps clearly did not help in getting the prize. However, while the chimps got the prize quickly and skipped all the extra steps, children painstakingly followed each and every one! This phenomenon in children is called over-imitation, since they tend to imitate what they are taught to the finest details, instead of emulation which is only making sure the final result is correct. The reasons children over-imitate are still unclear to scientists, and the fact that this only exists in humans is all the more puzzling. Some explanations proposed could be that over-imitation is hardwired in children’s brains, or that it is used as a form of bonding with one another and the person that is teaching the task at hand. Another explanation could be that as humans, we are highly ritualistic, and thus when copying extra steps children could be thinking that “this is how it’s done” and that it doesn’t necessarily have to serve a purpose to be deemed necessary.
Another study sought to find out if children have any judgements attached to rule-followers. It used a cross-cultural sample, which means it used children from more than one culture, done to check if a study’s results are the same around the world or if it’s only limited to one country or culture. In this study, they showed children a video of an adult making a necklace out of beads, and again, the process had extra steps that weren’t necessary, like the necklace-maker pressing the beads to her forehead before adding them on the string. Then, they showed two follow-up videos, one in which a child does everything the adult does, and one in which another child makes the necklace correctly but skips all the extra steps. Then, they asked the children which one of the kids is smarter and which one is more well-behaved, and the children’s answers to both these questions was the kid that didn’t skip any steps. This means that not only do children over-imitate and conform to rules, but they also consciously judge rule-followers as smarter and better people!
Humans are social beings, and part of this sociality is following the rules of the majority, and this starts early on with children copying the actions of the majority and following every single extra step in a process they are learning even if it is less productive to do so.
Interested in the original research? Check out the cited articles below:
Wen, N. J., Clegg, J. M., & Legare, C. H. (2019). Smart conformists: Children and adolescents associate conformity with intelligence across cultures. Child development, 90(3), 746-758.
Whiten, A. (2019). Conformity and over-imitation: An integrative review of variant forms of hyper-reliance on social learning. Advances in the Study of Behavior, 51, 31-75.
Like Peas in a Pod: What Do Preschoolers Understand About Friendship?
Like Peas in a Pod: What Do Preschoolers Understand About Friendship?
By: Jillian Rioux
It’s no secret that we get by with a little help from our friends: friendships are vital to our everyday lives. We often lean on our friends in times when we need an extra hand, a shoulder to cry on, or just someone to listen to us unleash our inner thoughts. As adults, we have a pretty solid understanding of what friendship is, how friendships develop, and the importance they have in our lives. But when exactly does this conceptualization begin? When do children begin to develop friendships, and what do these early companionships look like? What do young children pay attention to when deciding who they want to be friends with?
It is likely that you can name off key qualities that you look for in a friend pretty easily. A study at the University of Kansas found six qualities that adults value in their friendships: enjoyment of time spent together, equal give-and-take of support and understanding, voluntary helping, similarities in attitudes and activities, intimate self-disclosure, and agency. But what about children? Do they attribute the same value to these qualities? Research shows that children actually view similar factors as being central to friendship! During the preschool years, the three central factors that children consider in their understanding of friendship are proximity, similarity, and prosocial interactions.
Proximity
Imagine you live in an apartment complex. You have neighbours in the units above and below you, and in the unit next to you. Who do you think you are most likely to become friends with: the woman in the unit above you, the student in the unit below you, or the couple next door? If you said the couple next door, then you answered the question based on proximity.
Proximity involves spending time in a close physical range to another individual. Sensitivity to proximity as a factor in friendships develops pretty early, as studies have shown that even 3-5-years-olds expect that the amount of time spent with another person is related to their friendship status, with more time spent together indicating better friendship. Researchers at the University of California and University of Chicago presented scenarios involving three characters to children, and asked them which two characters were more likely to be friends. Children in this study assumed the characters who spent a lot of time together, liked to play together, and who sat next to each other in class, were more likely to be friends.
Not only do children consider proximity as a factor in developing friendships, but in their own friendships, children also consider the quality of the time spent in proximity with someone. A study at the University of Illinois investigated this by collecting and analyzing audio recordings of 3-9-year-olds during several play sessions. They found that the children who engaged in clear communication (e.g., expressing which toy they wanted to use) and successfully managed conflicts during their interactions (e.g., settling disagreements) were the ones who became friends. In sum, preschool-aged children understand that the amount of time two people spend together is a cue to their friendship status and, in their own relationships, they are also affected by the quality of the time spent with others.
Similarity
Another key factor in early friendship understanding is similarity. Research shows that from a very young age, we selectively choose social partners who are similar to us. For example, 1-year-olds prefer puppets who have the same food preferences as them, and 3-year-olds prefer individuals who share similar preferences and look like them. By the time children are of preschool-age, they begin to make inferences about others’ friendships based on their similarities. For example, they assume that two people of the same gender or race are likely to be friends, and they begin to view similarities in skills or experiences as cues to friendship, such as a passion for playing the piano or a similar travel experience to the zoo!
However, preschoolers also recognize that there are limits to the types of similarities that signal friendship. For example, children understand that arbitrary similarities, like sharing a birthday, are not relevant cues to friendship.
Prosocial interactions
We know that children see factors like proximity and similarity as important factors for developing friendships and that the quality of interactions matters as well. What kinds of behaviours do children expect friends to engage in? This brings us to the third key factor in children’s understanding of friendships: prosocial interactions.
Prosocial interactions include a wide range of positive behaviours, such as helping, sharing, and engaging in intimate self-disclosure. Many studies have found that preschoolers will share, help, support, and comfort their friends, and that they expect their friends to do the same for them. In brief, children recognize that support is a crucial component of a friendship. Not only do they recognize the importance of prosocial behaviour in their own friendships, but children also recognize this factor in others’ friendships as well. One study from Harvard University found that 4-year-olds infer friendship between individuals who help each other complete a task. Another study from the University of California and University of Chicago found that 3-6-year-olds infer friendship between two individuals if one provides help to the other. In short, preschoolers expect people to be friends with those who have helped them!
To summarize, our understanding of friendship evolves at a young age. Starting during the preschool years, we actively seek individuals who are near us, who help and share with us, and who share similar skills and experiences with us to be friends with, and our use of these factors become deeper and more complex as we age. Do you think these factors have played a role in your little one’s friendships?
Interested in the original research? Check out the cited articles below:
Afshordi, N. (2019). Children’s Inferences About Friendship and Shared Preferences Based on Reported Information. Child Development, 90.(3), 719-717. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13237
Afshordi, N., & Liberman, Z. (2021). Keeping friends in mind: Development of friendship concepts in early childhood. Social Development, 30.(2), 331-342. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12493
Children are curious to learn about people who are different from them!
Children are curious to learn about people who are different from them!
Written by: Claudia Sehl
Imagine there are two new kids at your little one’s school: one is from a local town, and the other is from a distant country. Based on this information alone, who do you think the students would rather play with on the first day?
You might predict that children would rather play with the kid from the local town. Some research has shown that from the age of five, children prefer to be friends with people who are similar to them. They chose to be friends with people who speak their language, share their accents, are the same gender, are the same race, or like the same things (e.g., Fawcett & Markson, 2010; Kinzler et al., 2007).
In one of our previous blog posts “How do children choose who to learn from?”, we talked about how children use various cues, such as past accuracy, confidence, and expertise, to determine whether a person is a reliable source of information! From a very young age, children are aware that some people are misinformed, so they are constantly evaluating whether people are knowledgeable and trustworthy. In today’s blog post, we will be continuing our discussion on how children are careful learners by sharing more research on how children determine who has expertise!
Results from this research might tell us that children typically prefer people who are similar to them. However, children’s preferences might change when making a different choice. For instance, who do you think the students would be more interested to learn about during show-and-tell? You might guess that students would choose the child from far away because they probably have more new and interesting experiences to share than the child from nearby.
In our research at the CORAL lab, we explored this question by asking children who they like more and who they want to learn more about (Sehl et al., 2021). In our first experiment, we showed 4-6-year-olds two characters. One character lived in Canada and had characteristics typical of people living here. For example, they lived in a place with a flat grassy landscape, North American houses, and where people play soccer. The other character lived far away and had characteristics atypical of Canadians. For example, they lived in a place with a rugged mountainous landscape, huts, and where people play hurling. We asked children who they liked better and who they wanted to learn more about. Children chose the foreign character more often when choosing who they wanted to learn about than who they liked better.
But what if children just wanted to learn about the far away character because they have interesting, unfamiliar traits? We conducted another experiment to find out whether children’s preferences are due to the foreign character’s distance or to their unfamiliar traits. We showed 4-6-year-olds the same characters, but this time, children were only told whether characters lived nearby or far away. We found that by age six, children preferred foreign characters more when choosing who they wanted to learn more about than who they liked.
This research tells us a lot about children’s social preferences: children may like people who are similar to them, but may be more curious to learn about people who are different than them. This also provides us insights that children’s social preferences change when making different choices.
Interested in the original research? Check out the cited articles below:
Fawcett, C. A., & Markson, L. (2010). Similarity predicts liking in 3-year-old children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 105(4), 345-358.
Kinzler, K. D., Dupoux, E., & Spelke, E. S. (2007). The native language of social cognition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(30), 12577-12580. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0705345104
Sehl, C. G., Friedman, O., & Denison, S. (2021). Children's Novelty Preferences Depend on Information-Seeking Goals. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 43, No. 43).
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