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Deciding whose words to trust profoundly impacts children's knowledge acquisition. In evaluating informants' trustworthiness, children are attentive to their social dominance. Previous studies have shown that children's trust preferences may differ across cultures based on the dominance of the informant: children in Western cultures prefer to trust in testimony from dominant informants, whereas children in Eastern cultures prefer to trust subordinate informants (Bernard et al., 2016; Charafeddine et al., 2019). We aim to investigate the potential cultural difference in the trust preferences of European American children (in the United States) and Chinese children (in China) from informants of varying levels of dominance, using a more refined method to assess children's trust preferences. We propose that different levels of authoritarianism – advocacies to obey authorities – in Western and Eastern cultures may explain the potential difference in children's selective trust. Specifically, as impacted by societal cultures, Chinese parents may possess a higher level of authoritarianism than European American parents and may place a higher emphasis on obedience in their parenting. Consequently, Chinese children may show stronger trust preferences from subordinate informants over dominant informants than European American children. Our research will offer insights into the potential mechanism underlying children's different learning preferences across cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Developing Belief Network is a consortium of researchers studying human development in diverse social-cultural settings, with a focus on the interplay between general cognitive development and culturally specific processes of socialization and cultural transmission in early and middle childhood. The current manuscript describes the study protocol for the network's first wave of data collection, which aims to explore the development and diversity of religious cognition and behavior. This work is guided by three key research questions: (1) How do children represent and reason about religious and supernatural agents? (2) How do children represent and reason about religion as an aspect of social identity? (3) How are religious and supernatural beliefs transmitted within and between generations? The protocol is designed to address these questions via a set of nine tasks for children between the ages of 4 and 10 years, a comprehensive survey completed by their parents/caregivers, and a task designed to elicit conversations between children and caregivers. This study is being conducted in 39 distinct cultural-religious groups (to date), spanning 17 countries and 13 languages. In this manuscript, we provide detailed descriptions of all elements of this study protocol, give a brief overview of the ways in which this protocol has been adapted for use in diverse religious communities, and present the final, English-language study materials for 6 of the 39 cultural-religious groups who are currently being recruited for this study: Protestant Americans, Catholic Americans, American members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans, and religiously unaffiliated Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carter and Gilovich (2012) investigated the centrality of experiential and material purchases to the self and concluded people have stronger associations with their experiential than their material purchases. In a pre-registered experiment with a US American Amazon Mechanical Turk sample, (N=743), we successfully replicated their Studies 3A, 3B, 3C, and 5. Experiential purchases were perceived as more reflective of true-self than material purchases for both self (d=0.65[0.57,0.73]) and for strangers (d=0.88[0.80,0.96]), and that when meeting a new person, information about experiential purchases was considered to be more insightful (d=1.13[1.04,1.22]), useful (d=1.14[1.05,1.23]), and fun to talk about (d=1.96[1.83,2.08]) than material purchases. Self-concept was more strongly associated with experiential purchases than with material purchases (d=0.39[0.25,0.54]), and that there was a negative association between experiential purchase satisfaction and the willingness to exchange memory (r=-.34[-.43,-.24]) (all effects above were p<.001). We added an extension examining change in evaluations of material and experiential purchases over time and found that current evaluations were more negative than past evaluations, yet to a lesser extent for experiential compared to material purchases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying high‐quality causal explanations is key to scientific understanding. This research (N = 202; 50% girls; Mage: 5.82 years; 64% Asian, 33% White, and 3% multiracial; data collected from 2018 to 2024) examined how explanation circularity and informants' social dominance impact children's learning preferences for causal explanations. Raised in a culture valuing circular logic, Chinese children still preferred non‐circular explanations and learning from informants providing non‐circular explanations (d ≥ 0.50). When informants with non‐circular explanations were subordinate to those with circular explanations, Chinese and American children preferred non‐circular over circular explanations (d = 1.10), but did not prefer learning new information from either informant. Although children weigh explanation quality over informant dominance when seeking explanations for given questions, they consider both cues when evaluating informants' credibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both talent and effort are considered essential sources of achievement, but past research suggests a preference for people who appear to achieve through talent. This research examined the potential naturalness preference in 306 Chinese children (M age : 6.12 years; 164 girls) and 352 adults (M age : 19.87 years; 182 women) in 2019. In Study 1, participants evaluated a natural or striver protagonist of equal achievement. Children attributed greater competence and warmth to naturals than strivers; adults exhibited this preference only when attributing competence. In Study 2, participants indicated their behavioral preferences between the two protagonists. Children, but not adults, interacted more with naturals than strivers. These findings indicate the naturalness preference emerges early (ds ≥ .27) but declines in strength over time., (© 2022 The Authors. Child Development © 2022 Society for Research in Child Development.)