Researchers of a new study found that children under the age of four don't have the will to win and are not competitive.
The will to win has both negative and positive attributes. While it can be a driving force for success, it can also destroy relationships. In a recent study, researchers found that this competitive behavior doesn't develop in a person until the age of four. Children below the age of four are also unaware of other people's perspectives and that what someone does depends on his/her understanding of the situation
For the new study, Johannes Roessler from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, and his co-authors Beate Priewasser and Josef Perner from the Department of Psychology at the University of Salzburg, tested 71 children aged between 3 and 5 years and conducted a series of experiments.
The first set of experiments tested the children's understanding of how people sometimes act on the basis of false beliefs. In the experiment, children observed a boy put a chocolate bar in a drawer and then go out to play. Another person then came and took the chocolate from the drawer and put it in a cupboard.
The participants were then asked to determine where the boy would look for the chocolate. All children under the age of four said the cupboard, which was the wrong answer for the boy was not aware the chocolate was replaced in the cupboard.
"Older children tend to predict that he will go to the drawer, which is the correct answer because the boy believes the chocolate to be in the drawer," Roessler said in a press statement. "Thus younger children seem to lack a developed understanding that people's intentional actions reflect their perspective (beliefs) on how best to accomplish their goals."
The next set of experiments was to see how well children understood other people's goals. The children were given vertical stands and a dice. They were asked to roll the dice and fill the stands with beads corresponding to the number on the dice. All participants could take these beads either from a basket or from another participant's stand. The objective of the game was to be the first to fill the stands.
Researchers had two motives behind allowing the participants to take beads from other participants' stands. Firstly, a participant could fill his own stand faster and secondly, it could foil the other participant's chances of filling his stand faster.
The authors of the study observed that very few children under the age of four took beads from another participant's stand, thus proving their lack of competitive behavior.
"The 'four years of age' rule isn't hard and fast. What's important is not the absolute age of the child, but the fact that those who do not understand how intentional action can be informed by false beliefs also tend to struggle with the idea of competition," concluded the researchers.
