Chinese children showed self-deprecating modest behavior at ages of 7-8

Children care about how others evaluate them. In East Asia, children aged 8 and up tend to downplay their own merit by actively concealing their good deeds. This has been regarded as modest behavior. As a way of self-presentation, modest behavior may be triggeredby the presence of other people in young children. A child may show modesty through a display of self-deprecating behavior at various levels, rather than in an all-or-nothing style. In this study, a new paradigm aimed at self-deprecating behavior was designed with the purpose of measuring the development of modest behavior between the ages of 5 and 8 years in a sample of 40 children. Children's ratings of their own merit, i.e., the quality in which they completed the task of cleaning the floor, were compared between a public and a private scenario. Results revealed a significant transition from self-promoting to self-deprecating behavior between the 5-6-year-olds and the 7-8-year-olds. Our findings indicate that children in this age period gradually exhibit reputation-managing behaviors in social situations, which is corroborated by the measurement of self-presentation in the self-introduction paradigm.

Automated summary

The study shows that children in East Asia tend to downplay their own merit by concealing their good deeds, which is seen as modest behavior. There is a transition from self-promoting to self-deprecating behavior between 5-6-year-olds and 7-8-year-olds, indicating that children in this age group gradually exhibit reputation-managing behaviors in social situations.