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Monkey See, Monkey (Doesn't Always) Do
When is the end more important than the means for children?
Posted May 27, 2021 Reviewed by Davia Sills
Key points
- Children frequently engage in overimitation.
- But children also are sometimes rational, selective imitators.
- Whether or not children copy a model's inefficient actions depends on a number of circumstantial factors.
When I was in graduate school, I became fascinated by the work of Dr. Andrew Meltzoff, who revealed that infants will imitate facial expressions from the time they are born. Later, I read an article by Gergely, Bekkering, and Kiraly, which showed that while they are proficient imitators from an early age, children can also be selective and rational in their imitation.
A few years after that, research by Horner and Whiten demonstrated that children would frequently slavishly copy all the actions that an adult model took to achieve a goal (such as retrieving a reward from a puzzle box), even if those actions were not causally necessary. This phenomenon—dubbed “overimitation”—is common in children from many cultures. Why exactly children overimitate—whether they believe that the actions are causally necessary or are more interested in copying the actions because they think they are supposed to (e.g., to affiliate with the model)—has been heavily debated in recent years.
Regardless of the precise reasoning behind children’s overimitation, all of these studies piqued my interest. I wanted to know exactly how far children would be willing to go to imitate. I, therefore, presented them with models who appeared to act in all seriousness and with clear intentionality. The actions of these models were not unnecessary, but were, in fact, somewhat ridiculous, in that the model’s decisions actually hindered the completion of the task at hand.
The task I used was to crush a cookie for a pie topping. I created two possible tools. One was clearly an effective cookie crusher—it had a solid, sturdy handle and a solid wooden bottom. The other was clearly not an effective tool for crushing—it was composed of fuzzy pom-poms. In a series of studies employing this task, a model or group of models always chose to crush the cookie using the ineffective tool. The question has always been whether or not children would be convinced to follow the model’s actions or would instead choose the tool that was clearly more functional.
It turns out that the answer to this question is quite complicated, and it varies depending on a number of factors. In this blog entry, I will focus particularly on circumstantial factors that seem to impact children’s decision-making in this paradigm (stay tuned to my next entry for additional factors related to the children and to the models that may also play a role). For example, when the model introduces the fuzzy tool as one that is “made for crushing cookies,” more children—especially 3-year-olds—copy her selection of that tool.
Culture also plays a role. Children—particularly children from a Chinese-American ethnic background—were more likely to copy when three models chose the inefficient tool than when just one did. This remained true even when the inefficient tool was the only one available to the models—and therefore was a rational choice for them—even though the children had the opportunity to select a more efficient tool. This is not incredibly surprising considering that the Chinese culture heavily emphasizes conformity.
Besides suggesting that the model’s actions were conventional by using three models, another way in which we have done so is through the model’s language. In a recent set of studies, we have presented children with a model who says either, “We always do it this way” (thus using conventional language), or, “I am going to crush a cookie” (thus using instrumental language) (see also original work by Clegg and Legare utilizing this kind of language). This study found that when the model prefaced her selection of an inefficient tool with conventional language, children were more likely to select the same tool than if she used more individualized, instrumental language.
A study that is currently in progress is exploring the degree to which children who are presented with an ineffective tool as conventional will encode it as truly being normative—i.e., the one that is really for the task. Children see a model use either conventional or instrumental language before selecting the less efficient tool, and then the children are given a turn to crush the cookie and choose between the two tools. Next, children are given a new set of four cookies and asked to crush them “as quickly as possible.”
In line with our previous findings, we expect that children who are exposed to conventional language will be more likely to select the same tool as the model when it is their turn. If, however, they continue stick with this tool—even when asked to be more efficient in a time-sensitive situation—then it will suggest that they truly believe that the ineffective tool is the “right” tool to use.
We began data collection for this study in the spring of 2020 but were soon interrupted by COVID-19. We hope to continue collecting data that will enable us to answer this intriguing question. Initial results were suggestive that among children exposed to a model using conventional language, several were not only willing to copy her at first but also persisted in using the ineffective tool even in the pressured situation.
Taken together, this series of studies has led me to conclude that children are rather thorough evaluators. Their decisions are not necessarily spontaneous, and the reasons behind their decisions are not necessarily black or white. They consider numerous factors—many within a matter of seconds—and then take action. And although they may not be able to articulate all the things they are considering at any given moment, it has become clear to me that they are not mindlessly copying everything we tell them to do.
As parents, teachers, and caregivers, we should, of course, be aware of the things we model in front of children. But we should also give them credit for their ability to carefully consider a number of factors before deciding whether or not to go along with us.
