In this section we discuss whether the promisee‘s social status affect the subjects‘ understanding of what a promise is. Section 4.1.1 explores the effects of social status on how our subjects perceive promises, and Section 4.1.2 shows how social status interacts with other factors. A thorough discussion of the effect of social status is provided in Section 4.1.3.
4.1.1 Effects of Social Status on Promise Judgment
The descriptive statistics of yes responses to the two comprehension tasks designed in the present study are presented in Table 4-1:
Table 4-1. Descriptive Statistics of Yes Responses to the Promise Judgment Question Concerning Social Status
Group Social status Number Mean SD
p-value
6-year-olds High 20 0.58 0.18 0.199
Low 20 0.54 0.19
7-year-olds High 20 0.59 0.18 0.316
Low 20 0.57 0.18
8-year-olds High 20 0.65 0.11 0.324
Low 20 0.62 0.11
9-year-olds High 20 0.68 0.10
0.008
Low 20 0.64 0.12
Control High 20 0.88 0.16
0.015
Low 20 0.81 0.19
Most subjects of the experimental groups performed similarly on their promise judgments regardless of whether the promise was made to a person with higher or lower social status. Significant differences between the promisees with higher and lower social status were only found in the 9-year-old group and the control group (p
< .05), but not in the three younger groups. However, it was found a promise made to a person with higher social status was more likely to be considered as an actual promise than one made to a person with relatively lower social status for all the participants.
4.1.2 Interaction between Social Status and Other Factors
Table 4-2 presents the descriptive statistics of the interaction between the promisee‘s social status and the outcome:
Table 4-2. Interaction between Social Status and Outcomes
Note: H = promisee with a higher social status; L = promisee with a lower social status
Consistent with the previous table, significant differences were only found in the older groups (9-year-olds: p = .002 and Control: p = .028). In the condition without informed outcomes, the scores of each group present a general tendency of higher scores for promises made to people with higher social status. However, such a tendency disappeared when the outcomes were informed, indicating that our children‘s understanding of promising was affected by the outcome.
A significant difference was found with regard to therelationship between social status and sincerity. Table 4-3 presents the descriptive statistics of the interaction between the promisee‘s social status and the promiser‘s sincerity.
Table 4-3. Relationship between Social Status and Sincerity
Note: H = promisee with a higher social status; L = promisee with a lower social status
In the sincere condition, the significance remained in the older groups (9-year-olds: p = .028, and Control: p = .031). In the insincere condition, the 9-year-olds could distinguish the differences when making a promise to a person with
Without Outcomes With Outcomes
superior or inferior social status (p = .028). Although significant differences were not seen in the control group, their performances approached statistical significance (p
= .055).
The younger groups did not exhibit significant differences in this regard, but a tendency was observed in both conditions that higher scores were given by the subjects when the promise was made to a person with higher social status.
4.1.3 General Discussion on Effects of Social Status
The first goal of the present study was to examine if social status is a factor that affects children‘s understanding of promising. Generally speaking, a tendency was found in all the groups that a promise was more likely to be recognized as such when it was being made to a person with higher social status, indicating that our subjects could differentiate between making promises to people with different social status. In both sincere and insincere conditions, the tendency of promises made to people with higher social status yielding higher scores in all the groups proves that all the subjects considered the promiser should be sincere in terms of making a commitment to an elder promisee. While interacted with the promise outcomes, the effects of social status also showed that all the subjects consistently gave higher scores on the promise made to an elder person in the condition without outcomes.
When making justification for their promise judgments, our subjects also clearly revealed their sensitivity to social status by referring to the promisee‘s social status in the condition of making a promise to an elder promisee, as shown in (1).
(1) Yinwei xiaozhang hen zhongyao.
because principal very important
‗(It is a promise,) Because the principal is an important person.‘(G2S9, Q71)
On the contrary, in the condition of making a promise to a promisee with low social status, the participants were less likely to refer to the promisee‘s social status when making their justification, as in (2):
(2) Yinwei Yuanyuan daying yao bang ta gai chengbao.
because PN promise will help he build castle
‗(It is a promise,) Because Yuanyuan promised to help him build the castle.‘
(G2S9, Q6)
In (2), this 7-year-old participant stated the utterance mentioned by the promiser but he did not address the promisee‘s social status when making a promise judgment, indicating that the participant could tell the differences of the promisee‘s social status.
In the previous studies, it has been proved that children modify their styles of speech to adjust different interlocutors (Hoff, 2010; Holmes, 1988; Sachs and Devin, 1976; Shatz and Gelman, 1973; Wolfson, 1983). For example, in Shatz and Gelman‘s (1973), children speak differently to listeners of different ages, using syntactically more complex speech and pragmatically more politeness strategies when speaking with adults and peers than to younger siblings. In our data, the result is consistent with such previous findings which claiming that children tend to change registers according to people with different social status. Our finding supports Mey‘s (1993) postulation that it is necessary to take social condition into consideration while making a promise (1993:126). The tendency of participants in the present study to recognize a promise made to an elder person more often illustrates this sensitivity to social status.
Though there were no significant differences in the younger groups, a tendency of higher scores in the promise judgment of making promises to a superior social status was found. In Piaget (1932, 1965), he studied Swiss children aged five to thirteen and found that children‘s morals and ethics development began between the
age of five to eight. During this period of development, children were in the initial stages of absorbing the concept of morals and ethics in school education. More social experiences may promote moral growth since interacting with peers is likely to contribute more to children‘s conventional moral reasoning (Kolhberg, 1963; Piaget, 1932; Turiel, 2006). Becaure parents may impede moral growth by providing an adult authoritarian influence on children, children receive greater exposure to social experiences in a school setting. Our 6-year-old preschoolers might be more heavily influenced by experiences at home than their 7- and 8-year-old counterparts who by attending elementary school and interacting with larger numbers of people, have become more interated into society and, as a result, have had more social experiences.
It is therefore understandable that our younger group performed worse than the older groups. In addition, because the 9-year-old children remained in school for longer periods of time due to an increased attention span, they were able to have more social interactions with their peers than younger children. This increased exposure leads to more sophistication, and likely explains why their responses to the promise judgments were the closest to those of the control group.