Social Confidence

Overview

Does social confidence increase or diminish with age? I wanted to test various ages and see if they had enough confidence to speak up when they noticed an error. People would want to know this because social confidence affects everyone at some point in their lives, whether that be choosing a job, correcting someone on a simple mistake, or even ordering at a restaurant. For example, if you aren't very confident or confrontational, you may not want to pursue a career such as teaching where you use a lot of social interaction. I tested my question by individually taking kids out of class and playing a game with them involving two cups and an object. In order to ensure everyone wins and no loss of data, there was actually an object under both cups, but the participants didn't know that. Before they started, I had them pick a prize, then once they won, I gave them a different prize than what they chose. This sets up the major question: would they take the prize anyway or correct my error? I hypothesized that younger children (5-6) would correct me more often, and I was completely correct. There was a perfect data flip (14% and 86%) from 5-6 year old females and 10-12 year old females. I believe the reason for this is that younger children have fewer learned behaviors and have been in fewer situations where they develop the fears behind lack of social confidence, also known as fear-based learning.

Competition history

• ISEF 2022 Behavioral and Social Sciences · Entry BEHA071 · Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Resources

• ISEF abstract page ↗

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