Role of theory-of-mind in strategic sophistication and prosociality amongst children : an experimental study

• Main Author: Lee, Pei Qi
• Other Authors: Ho Moon-Ho Ringo
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2020
• Subjects: Social sciences::Psychology::Applied psychology; Social sciences::Economic theory::Microeconomics
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/140418
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Individuals go through numerous interactions daily and Binmore (2012) once impeccably captured human interactions in a statement - “A game is being played whenever people have anything to do with each other.” In the field of game theory, there have been a plethora of strategic games designed to mimic human interactions. In our current study, a simplified version of the race game (HIT) and level-k reasoning game (stickers game) were employed to measure individual’s abilities to put themselves in the shoes of others, and their abilities to infer how others will respond to their actions (decisions). Economists and game theorists coin this as “strategic thinking”. Dictator and ultimatum games were used to measure individuals’ degree of “altruism”. Individuals’ abilities to think strategically and care about others cannot be dissociated from their abilities to think from others’ points of view during social interactions. Psychologists relate this ability to Theory-of-Mind (ToM). This study thus aims to find out if ToM, Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and age are correlated with strategic thinking amongst children. Concurrently, we investigate if the same factors are correlated with altruism in children. 49 children were recruited to undergo several measures of the aforementioned constructs. Results from this study found that (1) there is a positive correlation between children’s IQ and ToM; (2) a positive correlation between children’s IQ/ age/ ToM and strategic thinking in HIT5 and stickers game; (3) a positive correlation between children’s first-order ToM/ IQ and altruism.