INCLUDE - Preschoolers' social inclusion of out-group members

A great body of research examined children’s social exclusion behavior and reactions to social exclusion. Surprisingly, social inclusion has not been investigated to such degrees. So far it remains unclear how social inclusion of others develops in middle childhood. In addition, the paradigms used in this field often base on self-report or potential behavior in story vignettes. Action-based paradigms are needed to improve the investigation of social in- and exclusion behavior. We developed a novel task following the Cyberball paradigm to assess preschoolers’ social inclusion behavior and overcome existing methodological gaps of previous studies. We want to investigate the trajectory of social inclusion in preschool ages. Further we want to find out how this behavior is influenced by group membership.