Do I prefer someone inside my group or outside my group?

For 5- to 8-year olds

This study will take place on a video call, live with a researcher! Clicking on the “Schedule a time to participate” button will send you to an online calendar where you can select a date and time that works for you

During the Zoom meeting you will meet one of our researchers, and they will tell you a story about students in a classroom that need to select one leader. The story will align your child with one of two groups and ask them who should be the leader of the classroom, their in-group leader or the out-group leader? We will then show the participating child negative events (e.g. student not sharing cookies) involving either their in-group candidate or another student. Finally, participants have to once again make the choice of who should be the leader of the classroom.

In this study we are interested in children’s preferences on who should be the leader of a classroom when half of the classroom chooses the participant’s in-group leader and the other half chooses an out-group leader. Previous research tells us that during this developmental age, children align strongly with their in-group (even if briefly assigned) and prefer those that are friendly over unfriendly towards others. Therefore, we are especially interested in how children’s preferences for leadership will differ when they see evidence of their in-group candidate acting unfriendly towards other students. This study will give us more insight on children’s decision making when choosing leadership especially between an unfriendly in-group and neutral out-group.

15 minutes

Online participation of this study will be compensated in the form of a $3 Tango gift card sent to your email within 2 weeks as long as they meet the eligibility criteria.

The Eligibility criteria are:
1) Child needs to be in the age range
2) Child needs to be visible
3) Only one gift card is given per child