哪些因素导致儿童倾向于将个人视为具有不同特征和能力?本研究测试了幼儿在对同伴进行推断时是否受到成年人的非语言行为的影响。在研究1中,参与者(5-6年)观看了一个“老师”和两个“学生”之间互动的多个视频;所有的人都是参与者不熟悉的。在每个剪辑中,学生的行为相似,但是老师没有:她要么笑了,点点头,感动,或者对一个学生摇了摇头,用中立的表情看着另一个学生。在研究1中,孩子们倾向于推断学生更聪明,更好,如果老师对他们表现得更积极,就会变得更强。研究2教师行为的差异与学生表现的差异。当被问到谁更聪明时,孩子们选择了表现较低的学生,他们从老师那里获得了更多积极的非语言线索,而不是表现较高的学生,他们收到的积极线索较少。研究结果表明,权威人物的非语言行为会影响儿童对他人的推论,阐明了一种指导幼儿对社会世界中人们的评价的机制。
What factors contribute to children\'s tendency to view individuals as having different traits and abilities? The present research tested whether young children are influenced by adults\' nonverbal behaviors when making inferences about peers. In Study 1, participants (5-6 years) viewed multiple videos of interactions between a \'teacher\' and two \'students;\' all individuals were unfamiliar to participants. In each clip, the students behaved similarly, but the teacher did not: She either smiled, nodded, touched, or shook her head at one student, and looked at the other student with a neutral expression. In Study 1, children tended to infer that students were smarter, nicer, and stronger if the teacher behaved more positively toward them. Study 2 pitted differences in the teacher\'s behavior against differences in the students\' performance. When asked who was smarter, children selected lower-performing students who received more positive nonverbal cues from the teacher rather than higher-performing students who received less positive cues. The findings indicate that an authority figure\'s nonverbal behaviors can influence children\'s inferences about others, shedding light on one mechanism guiding young children\'s evaluations of people in their social world.