Children as young as seven years old may hesitate to ask questions in school because they worry classmates will think they are “stupid”
Adults are often embarrassed about asking for help. It’s an act that can make people feel vulnerable. The moment you ask for directions, after all, you reveal that you may be lost. Seeking someone’s assistance can make you feel like you are broadcasting your incompetence.
To learn more about how children think about reputation, we applied a classic technique from developmental psychology. Kids’ reasoning about the world around them can be quite sophisticated, but they can’t always explain what’s going on in their mind. So we crafted simple stories and then asked children questions about these scenarios to allow kids to showcase their thinking.
We also asked kids about other scenarios. We found that they recognize several more behaviors that might make a child appear less smart in front of fellow kids, such as admitting to failure or modestly downplaying successes. Children are therefore acutely aware of several ways in which a person’s actions might make them appear less astute in the eyes of others.
Instead reputational barriers likely require reputation-based solutions. First, adults should lower the social stakes of seeking help. For instance, teachers could give children more opportunities to seek assistance privately by making themselves available to students for one-on-one conversations while classmates tackle group work. Teachers should couple this effort with steps that help students perceive asking questions in front of others as normal, positive behaviors.
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