![]() First, adults should lower the social stakes of seeking help. Such reputational barriers likely require reputation-based solutions. ![]() Research suggests that we may underestimate just how uncomfortable others feel when they ask for assistance. These efforts can be difficult when someone is concerned with their appearance to others. To improve in any domain, one must work hard, take on challenging tasks (even if those tasks might lead to struggle or failure), and ask questions. Their reluctance could seriously impede academic progress. When children themselves are the ones struggling, it seems quite possible they, too, might avoid seeking out help when others are present, given our findings. Children are therefore acutely aware of several ways in which a person's actions might make them appear less astute in the eyes of others. We found that they recognize several more behaviors that might make a child appear less smart in front of fellow kids, such as admitting to failure or modestly downplaying successes. We also asked kids about other scenarios. When assistance could be sought privately (on a computer rather than in person), children thought both characters were equally likely to ask for it. And children's expectations were truly “reputational” in nature-they were specifically thinking about how the characters would act in front of peers. But by age seven or eight, children thought that the kid who wanted to seem smart would be less likely to ask for assistance. The four-year-olds were equally likely to choose either of the two kids as the one who would seek help. We then asked which of these characters would be more likely to raise their hand in front of their class to ask the teacher for help. In one study, we told children that both kids did poorly on a test. One of the characters genuinely wanted to be smart, and the other merely wanted to seem smart to others. So we crafted simple stories and then asked children questions about these scenarios to allow kids to showcase their thinking.Īcross several studies, we asked 576 children, ages four to nine, to predict the behavior of two kids in a story. Kids' reasoning about the world around them can be quite sophisticated, but they can't always explain what's going on in their mind. To learn more about how children think about reputation, we applied a classic technique from developmental psychology. But if they are afraid to ask for help because their classmates are watching, learning will suffer. At some point, every child struggles in the classroom. Our research suggests that as early as age seven, children begin to connect asking for help with looking incompetent in front of others. In fact, kids sometimes go so far as to cheat at simple games to look smart. This research has revealed that youngsters as young as age five care deeply about the way others think about them. ![]() But a wave of findings in the past few years has pushed back against that assumption. Until relatively recently, psychologists assumed that children did not start to care about their reputation and peers' perceptions until around age nine. New research suggests young children don't seek help in school, even when they need it, for the same reason. ![]() Seeking assistance can feel like you are broadcasting your incompetence. The moment you ask for directions, after all, you reveal that you are lost. It's an act that can make people feel vulnerable. ![]() Adults are often embarrassed about asking for aid. ![]()
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