Culture moderates children’s responses to ostracism situations

In this study, we investigate the mechanism by which cultural differences in interdependence lead to differences in children’s estimates of the pain of ostracism. If interdependence provides a protective buffer against the negative effects of ostracism, as has been suggested by previous research, then the relationship between cultural group and the estimated pain of ostracism should be mediated by the tendency to anticipate the ostracized individual seeking social support. We thus presented children with the same ostracism situation that we used in Studies 1a and 2, and asked them what they thought the ostracized child would do to make him/herself feel better. We predicted that children from the interdependent farming community should be significantly more likely to think that the ostracized child would seek social support by playing with their friends, rather than by engaging in a non-social strategy such as playing with a toy. Furthermore, we predicted that the tendency to do so would mediate the relationship between cultural group and the estimated pain of ostracism.

We also measured children’s own conception of their interdependence to further test our assumption that members of the farming communities are more interdependent than are members of the herding communities. In order to do this, we used a task originally developed by Kitayama and colleagues (2009) and adapted by Keller and colleagues (e.g., Rübeling et al., 2011). In this task, we asked children to draw a picture of themselves and their friend. We predicted that children from the interdependent farming community would draw themselves and their friend standing significantly closer together, reflecting the relational closeness within interdependent communities. Following Kitayama et al. (2009) and Rübeling et al. (2001), we further predicted that children from the interdependent farming community would draw themselves relatively small compared to their friend. We asked children to draw themselves and their friend (and not, for example, their family members) because the ostracism situation depicted in our task showed ostracism between peers. We reasoned that having interdependent ties with similar others (friends) would be particularly likely to act as a buffer against the pain associated with this situation.

Finally, we wanted to check that any differences in children’s responses could not be explained by differences in how frequently ostracism occurred within the two cultural groups. The young age of our participants meant that we could not ask them directly for an estimate of how frequently the type of situation depicted in our stimuli occurred. Instead, we showed the drawing of the ostracism situation to children’s parents and asked them how often situations like the one depicted occurred among children of their acquaintance.

Please note that, in line with other studies that have been conducted in this region, information about the study was read to the parents of children who participated and their informed consent was obtained orally rather than in written form.

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