The Development of Social Exclusion Detection in Early Childhood: Awareness of Social Exclusion Does Not Always Align with Social Preferences

Starting in the preschool years, children show socially exclusive behaviors, such as intentionally leaving out another child from a ball game. Prior research investigating social exclusion understanding in preschoolers primarily used interview methods and it is clear that the verbal and cognitive skills necessary to identify and reason about social exclusion become more sophisticated with age. Yet it is unknown how children’s ability to identify social exclusion relates to their own behavior, such as their social preference for socially inclusive or exclusive individuals. Further, whether such social preferences remain stable or change across development is an open question. Thus, the current study investigated whether the ability to identify social exclusion develops in tandem with social preference behavior by assessing 3- to 6-year-old children’s (N = 256) identification of social exclusion and preferences between socially exclusive and inclusive agents. Five- to six-year-old children correctly identified social exclusion and preferred inclusive agents over exclusive agents across two experiments. Three- to four-year-old children could correctly identify social exclusion, but did not show evidence of a preference for inclusive agents over exclusive agents. Children were also able to detect implicit, nonverbalized social exclusion equally well as explicit, verbalized social exclusion across development. These findings suggest that young children’s social preferences are not wholly dictated by their ability to identify socially exclusive agents. This divergent pattern of social preference from identification has implications for interpreting social preference behavior in young children.