The developmental approach to young children's strategic social cognition and behaviour

This study explores the development of strategic behaviour related to kindness and intelligence dimensions in 3- to 8-year-old children. Previous research systematically highlighted the affective bias that limited young children's thinking and behaving in strategic terms. We argue that young children are able to grasp specific dimensions of social affordances from personality traits and behaviour exemplifying these traits. The results obtained in the partner choice paradigm revealed a developmental increase in social utility understanding. This supports our hypothesis of early social affordances understanding and provides empirical evidence that affective bias did not drastically influence strategic partner choice in 4- to 8-year-old children. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.