Children's reasoning about unconventional opinions as evidence for naive realism
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- It has long been argued in the literature on the development of theory of mind that children possess a precocious understanding of desires. One distinctive feature of desires is their subjectivity: different people want different things, and even if someone wants something unconventional, that person is not wrong and that want is not invalid. Contrary to this normative description, recent evidence suggests that both adults and preschoolers are susceptible to the influence of naive realism—the belief that "I see the world as it really is"—and in fact treat unconventional desires as unacceptable. Given this tension, in this dissertation, I explore the bounds of children's understanding of desires' subjectivity. I argue that children treat desires as subjective when they are able to analyze desires in terms of goal-directed behavior. In Study 1, children appropriately predict the behavior of that a character's desire will elicit, even when that desire is highly unconventional. In Study 2, I present preliminary evidence that children judge at least some unconventional desires to be acceptable when they are framed in the context of a goal. Taken together, these findings add important nuance to our understanding of children's desire psychology, highlighting the ways in which preschoolers' theory of mind may build on their understanding of goal-directed behavior.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Holubar, Taylor Fore |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Psychology. |
| Primary advisor | Markman, Ellen M |
| Thesis advisor | Markman, Ellen M |
| Thesis advisor | Dweck, Carol S, 1946- |
| Thesis advisor | Frank, Michael C, (Professor of human biology) |
| Advisor | Dweck, Carol S, 1946- |
| Advisor | Frank, Michael C, (Professor of human biology) |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Taylor Fore Holubar. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Psychology. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2015. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2015 by Taylor Fore Holubar
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY).
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