Emotions before actions: When children see costs as causal.

Adults expect people to be biased by sunk costs, but young children do not. We tested between two accounts for why children overlook the sunk cost bias. On one account, children do not see sunk costs as causal. The other account posits that children see sunk costs as causal, but unlike adults, think future actions cannot make up for sunk costs. These accounts make opposing predictions about whether children should see sunk costs as affecting emotions. Across three experiments, 4-7-year-olds (total N = 320) and adults (total N = 429) saw stories about characters who collected items that were easy or difficult to obtain, and predicted characters' emotions and actions. At all ages, participants anticipated that characters would feel sadder about high-cost objects, but only adults predicted that characters would keep high-cost objects. Our findings show that children see incurred costs as causal, and that costs are integrated children's and adults' theory of emotions. Moreover, the findings suggest that developmental differences in sunk cost reasoning may rest in children's incomplete mental accounting. We also discuss children's reasoning about rational and irrational action.

People accept breaks in the causal chain between crime and punishment.

Crime and punishment are usually connected. An agent intentionally causes harm, other people find out, and they punish the agent in response. We investigated whether people care about the integrity of this causal chain. Across seven experiments, participants (total N = 1,709) rated the acceptability of punishing agents for one crime when the agents had committed a different crime. Overall, participants generally approved of such wayward punishment. They endorsed it more strongly than punishing totally innocent agents, though they often approved of punishing agents for their correct crimes more strongly. Participants sometimes supported wayward punishment when wrongdoers were punished for a different kind of crime than the one committed, and they supported several different kinds of wayward punishments. Together the findings show that people often tolerate breaks in the causal chain between crime and punishment.

When children choose fantastical events in fiction.

Although stories for children often feature supernatural and fantastical events, children themselves often prefer realistic events when choosing what should happen in a story. In two experiments, we investigated whether 3- to 5-year-olds (total N = 240 from diverse backgrounds) might be more likely to include fantastical events in stories about familiar fantasy characters. In Experiment 1, children saw stories about fantasy or real-world characters (e.g., a mermaid or an ordinary woman) and judged whether they would achieve goals using fantastic or realistic methods. Children were more likely to choose fantastic methods for the fantasy characters, and this tendency was more common in older children. In Experiment 2, children were asked yes/no questions about whether characters could use fantastic, realistic, and unusual methods to achieve goals. Children more often affirmed fantastic methods for fantasy than real-world characters. These findings contrast with previous work suggesting children avoid including fantastic events in fiction and suggest that children use precedent and familiarity to decide what can happen in a story. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Improbable but possible: Training children to accept the possibility of unusual events.

Young children tend to deny the possibility of events that violate their expectations, including events that are merely improbable, like making onion-flavored ice cream or owning a crocodile as a pet. Could this tendency be countered by teaching children more valid strategies for judging possibility? We explored this question by training children aged 4-12 (n = 128) to consider either the similarity between the target event and unusual events that have actually occurred or causal mechanisms that might bring the target event about. Both trainings increased children's acceptance of improbable events but only for the types of events addressed during training. Older children were more likely to accept improbable events, as were children who scored higher on a measure of cognitive reflection, but neither age nor cognitive reflection moderated the effects of training. These findings indicate that children can use both similarity and causality to assess possibility, but the use of this information is highly circumscribed, further demonstrating how robustly children conflate improbability with impossibility. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Close counterfactuals and almost doing the impossible.

Can we feel that an unrealized outcome nearly happened if it was never possible in the first place? People often consider counterfactual events that did not happen, and some counterfactuals seem so close to reality that people say they "almost" or "easily could have" happened. Across four preregistered experiments (total N = 1,228), we investigated how judgments of counterfactual closeness depend on possibility, and whether this varies across two kinds of close counterfactuals. In judging whether outcomes almost happened, participants were more strongly impacted by possibility than by incremental manipulations of probability. In contrast, when judging whether outcomes easily could have happened, participants treated the distinction between impossible and possible like any other variation in probability. Both kinds of judgments were also impacted by propensity, though these effects were comparatively small. Together, these findings reveal novel differences between the two kinds of close counterfactuals and suggest that while possibility is privileged when judging what almost happened, probability is the focus when judging what easily could have happened.

Calculated Feelings: How Children Use Probability to Infer Emotions.

Developing the ability to accurately infer others' emotions is crucial for children's cognitive development. Here, we offer a new theoretical perspective on how children develop this ability. We first review recent work showing that with age, children increasingly use probability to infer emotions. We discuss how these findings do not fit with prominent accounts of how children understand emotions, namely the script account and the theory of mind account. We then outline a theory of how probability allows children to infer others' emotions. Specifically, we suggest that probability provides children with information about how much weight to put on alternative outcomes, allowing them to infer emotions by comparing outcomes to counterfactual alternatives.

Can compression take place in working memory without a central contribution of long-term memory?

Information is easier to remember when it is recognized as structured. One explanation for this benefit is that people represent structured information in a compressed form, thus reducing memory load. However, the contribution of long-term memory and working memory to compression are not yet disentangled. Previous work has mostly produced evidence that long-term memory is the main source of compression. In the present work, we reveal two signatures of compression in working memory using a large-scale naturalistic data set from a science museum. Analyzing data from more than 32,000 memory trials, in which people attempted to recall briefly displayed sequences of colors, we examined how the estimated compressibility of each sequence predicted memory performance. Besides finding that compressibility predicted memory performance, we found that greater compressibility of early subsections of sequences predicted better memory for later subsections, and that mis-recalled sequences were simpler than the originals. These findings suggest that (1) more compressibility reduces memory load, leaving space for additional information; (2) memory errors are not random and instead reflect compression gone awry. Together, these findings suggest that compression can take place in working memory. This may enable efficient storage on the spot without direct contributions from long-term memory. However, we also discuss ways long-term memory could explain our findings.

Ownership and willingness to compete for resources.

Boyer proposes that ownership intuitions depend on tracking cues predictive of agents' motivations to compete for resources. However, the account may mis-predict people's intuitions about ownership, and it may also be too cognitively costly to be feasible. Even so, alternative accounts could benefit by taking inspiration from how the account handles thorny issues in the psychology of ownership.

Local or foreign? Flexibility in children's preference for similar others.

Children have a robust social preference for people similar to them, like those who share their language, accent, and race. In the present research, we show that this preference can diminish when children consider who they want to learn about. Across three experiments, 4- to 6-year-olds (total N = 160; 74 female, 86 male, from the Waterloo region in Canada, a predominantly White and middle-class region) and adults (N = 103) saw pairs of characters. One character was from nearby and had characteristics typical of the participating child's location (e.g., playing soccer), whereas the other character was from far away and had characteristics atypical of children's location (e.g., playing hurling). In Experiment 1, children had no preference when judging who they liked better, but preferred foreign characters when judging who they wanted to learn about. Experiments 2 and 3 followed up by using procedures where participants were not told anything about the characters besides whether they were local or foreign. Children and adults preferred local characters when choosing who they liked, but preferred local characters less when choosing who to learn about. These findings show that children's preferences for similar others are flexible and depend on the judgment they are making. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Why Children Believe They Are Owned.

Owners decide what happens to their property, and so adults typically view autonomous beings as non-owned. If children likewise consider autonomy when judging what is owned, this may have implications for how they view themselves. If children believe that parents have power over them, that they themselves lack autonomy, and that only the autonomous cannot be owned, this may lead them to believe that they are owned by their parents. Across three experiments, we found that 4- to 7-year-old children (N = 206) consistently affirm that children are owned by their parents. In Experiment 1, children judged that children and domesticated animals are owned, but denied this for adults and wild animals. In Experiment 2, children were more likely to see children as owned by their parents than by their teachers, and also denied that children own either kind of adult. Finally, in Experiment 3, children were less likely to view a child who makes decisions against parental authority as owned. These judgments are unlikely to mirror what children have been told. Instead, they likely result from children spontaneously using autonomy principles, and possibly other principles of ownership, in reasoning about the ownership of living entities.

Perceived similarity explains beliefs about possibility.

No one has ever performed a successful brain transplant or traveled the Milky Way, but people often see these events as within the realm of possibility. Across six preregistered experiments (N = 1,472) we explore whether American adults' beliefs about possibility are driven by perceptions of similarity to known events. We find that people's confidence in the possibility of hypothetical future events is strongly predicted by how similar they think the events are to events that have already happened. We find that perceived similarity explains possibility ratings better than how desirable people think the events are, or how morally good or bad they think it would be to accomplish them. We also show that similarity to past events is a better predictor of people's beliefs about future possibilities than counterfactual similarity or similarity to events in fiction. We find mixed evidence regarding whether prompting participants to consider similarity shifts their beliefs about possibility. Our findings suggest that people may reflexively use memories of known events to guide their inferences about what is possible. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The second-order problem of other minds.

The target article proposes that people perceive social robots as depictions rather than as genuine social agents. We suggest that people might instead view social robots as social agents, albeit agents with more restricted capacities and moral rights than humans. We discuss why social robots, unlike other kinds of depictions, present a special challenge for testing the depiction hypothesis.

Two kinds of counterfactual closeness.

People often consider counterfactual events that did not happen, and some counterfactuals seem so close to actual events that they are described as aspects of reality. In five preregistered experiments (N = 1,195), we show there are two kinds of counterfactual closeness. These two kinds of closeness are inferred from different causes, elicit different emotions, and are described using different linguistic expressions. Distance-based closeness is inferred from the distance between the counterfactual and reality, is expressed by saying the counterfactual almost happened, and is more strongly linked with disappointment than surprise. Meanwhile, odds-based closeness is inferred from prior odds, is expressed by saying the counterfactual easily could have happened, and is more strongly linked with surprise. Even without information about the distance between outcomes and prior odds, people more strongly link expressions of whether something almost happened with disappointment and link expressions of whether something easily could have happened with surprise. In sum, counterfactual closeness is not perceived on a single dimension. Instead, there are at least two forms of closeness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Probability and intentional action.

How does probability affect attributions of intentionality? In five experiments (total N = 1410), we provide evidence for a probability raising account holding that people are more likely to see the outcome of an agent's action as intentional if the agent does something to increase the odds of that outcome. Experiment 1 found that high probability without probability raising does not suffice for strong attributions of intentionality. Participants were more likely to conclude a girl intentionally obtained a desired gumball from a single gumball machine when it offered favorable odds for getting that kind of gumball compared with when it offered poor odds, but their attributions of intentionality were lukewarm. Experiments 2 and 3 then found stronger attributions of intentionality when the girl raised her probability of success by choosing to use machines offering favorable odds over machines offering poor odds. Finally, Experiments 4 and 5 examined whether these effects of probability raising might reduce to consideration of agents' beliefs and expectations. We found that although these mental states do matter, probability raising matters too-people attribute intentional actions to agents who increase their odds of success, rather than to agents who merely become convinced that success is likely. We discuss the implications of these findings for claims that control and skill contribute to attributions of intentional action.

The social network: How people infer relationships from mutual connections.

People infer that individuals are socially related if they have overlapping preferences, beliefs, and choices. Here we examined whether people also infer relationships by attending to social network information. In five preregistered experiments, participants were shown the social networks of two target people and their friends or acquaintances within a group, and judged if the targets were socially related to one another. In the first three experiments, adults (total N = 528) were more likely to judge that individuals were friends when a high rather than low proportion of their friendships were mutual. Adults also considered other factors when inferring friendships, such as the number of friends each individual had. In the final two experiments, 5-7-year-olds (total N = 135) were also sensitive to the proportion of mutual relationships. Together, our work suggests that people use proportional information and statistical inferences when assessing whether individuals are socially related. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Anchored in the present: preschoolers more accurately infer their futures when confronted with their pasts.

People often speculate about what the future holds. They wonder what will happen tomorrow, and what the world will be like in the distant future. Nonetheless, people's ability to consider future possibilities may be restricted when they consider their own futures. Adults show the 'end of history' illusion, believing they have changed more in the past than they will in the future. Further, preschoolers are even more limited in anticipating future change, as 3-year-olds insist their current desires will persist later in life. These findings suggest a deficit in children's and adults' abilities to simulate alternative possibilities that pertain to themselves. However, we report four experiments (n = 233) suggesting otherwise, at least for children. We find that 3-year-olds accurately infer their futures when prompted to consider their past rather than present preferences. Children also succeed at inferring their past preferences when not shown items they currently prefer. This shows that children can reason about their pasts and futures, though this ability is hindered when they are shown items that anchor them to the present. Our findings suggest that children's difficulties with mental time travel reflect a failure to shift away from the present rather than an inability to simulate alternative possibilities. This article is part of the theme issue 'Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny'.

The odds tell children what people favor.

In pursuing goals, people seek favorable odds. We investigated whether young children use this fact to infer goals from people's actions across two experiments on Canadian 3- to 7-year-old children (N = 316; 167 girls, 149 boys). Participants' demographic information was not formally collected, but the region is predominantly middle-class and White. In Experiment 1, 3-year-old children saw a story where one agent went to a gumball machine with mostly red gumballs and another agent went to a machine with mostly purple ones. When asked which agent wanted a red gumball, children mostly selected the agent who chose the mostly red machine. Moreover, children responded at chance in a control condition where they judged which agent knew they would get a red gumball. In Experiment 2a, 3- to 7-year-old children saw a story where an agent either chose between two gumball machines or two open bowls of gumballs. In both conditions, the agent chose a location with mostly red gumballs over one with mostly blue gumballs but ended up with a blue gumball. Children were more likely to infer the agent had wanted a red gumball when the agent had made a probabilistic choice (machines) than a determinative choice (bowls), though inferences that the red gumball was preferred also increased with age. In Experiment 2b, a preregistered follow-up, American adults responded similarly to the older children. Together our findings suggest that children infer goals by drawing on the understanding that people seek favorable odds, though the clearest findings come from children aged 6 years and older. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Easy or difficult? Children's understanding of how supply and demand affect goal completion.

Three experiments examined children's understanding of how supply and demand affect the difficulty of completing goals. Participants were 368 predominantly White Canadians (52% female, 48% male) tested in 2017-2022. In Experiment 1, 3-year-olds recognized that obtaining resources is easier where supply exceeds demand than where demand exceeds supply. However, in Experiment 2, 3-year-olds were insensitive to supply and demand when comparing situations where demand exceeded supply to a greater or lesser degree. Finally, Experiment 3 revealed a developmental lag in 3- to 7-year-olds' understanding of how supply and demand affects goal completion: Children succeeded when contrasting a surplus and a shortage of supply relative to demand at 4;2. But they only succeeded when contrasting degrees of greater supply than demand at 5;10.

Novelty preferences depend on goals.

People are sometimes drawn to novel items, but other times prefer familiar ones. In the present research we show, though, that both children's and adults' preferences for novel versus familiar items depend on their goals. Across four experiments, we showed 4- to 7-year-olds (total N = 498) and adults (total N = 659) pairs of artifacts where one was familiar and the other was novel (e.g., a four-legged chair and ten-legged chair). In Experiment 1, children wanted to have familiar artifacts, but to learn about novel ones. Experiment 2 replicated this pattern using a simpler procedure, and found the same pattern in adults. In Experiment 3, 4- to 6-year-olds and adults more strongly preferred familiar items when choosing which they would rather have than when choosing which they would rather try using. Finally, Experiment 4 replicated adults' preferences to have familiar items and learn about novel ones with an additional set of items. Together these findings show that preferences for novelty depend on people's goals. We suggest these effects arise because children and adults are motivated both by the promise of information and the desire for safe options in high commitment decisions that entail risk.

Young children infer psychological ownership from stewardship.

Although people take care of their own possessions, they also engage in stewardship and take care of things they do not own. Here, we examined what young children infer when they observe stewardship behavior of an object. Through four experiments on predominantly middle-class Canadian children (total N = 350, 168 girls and 182 boys from a predominantly White and middle-class region), we found that children as young as 4 or 5 infer feelings of ownership from stewardship behaviors and distinguish between psychological and legal ownership. They also understand that psychological and legal ownership are independent as one can exist without the other, and children as young as 3 may link stewardship with welfare concerns. We also suggest that while stewardship has been shown to be a consequence of psychological ownership, it is also likely to be an antecedent. As future stewards of our resources, young children's understanding of the link between psychological ownership and stewardship links directly to sustainability concerns. We contribute theoretically both to the child development and psychological ownership literatures. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).