Do babies like popular people?

6-24 month-olds

Your child will watch a video where a series of friendly shapes interact with each other. Importantly, one of the shapes (i.e., the "popular shape") will interact with all the other shapes. Afterwards, your child will see a video with just two of the shapes side-by-side. We are curious which shape they will prefer to look at.

Humans are both sensitive to and interested in popularity. By childhood, this often materializes as an outright preference for people perceived as popular. However, we don't know where this preference comes from: is it something children learn over the course of early childhood, or does it reflect something deeper about how humans think? In this study, infants view a series of social interactions where one shape appears to be "friends with everyone" and another shape---who interacts just as many times---has fewer overall social partners. We are interested in if infants prefer to look at the shape with a greater variety of social partners, which may reflect a preference for individuals perceived as popular, influential, or socially competent.

5-10 minutes

To thank you for your participation, you will receive a $5 Amazon.com gift card within 2 weeks of your participation. To be eligible for the gift card, your child must be in the age range for the study, you need to provide a valid consent statement, we need to see that there is a child with you during in the video, and this needs to be the first time that your child is participating in this study. We will also ask you to provide your email at the end of the study so that we can send you the gift card. Emails are kept strictly confidential and are used for compensation only.