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We argue that, contrary to standard views of development, children understand the world in terms of hidden, nonobvious structure. We review research showing that early in childhood, items are not understood strictly in terms of the features that present themselves in the immediate “here‐and‐now,” but rather are thought to have a hidden reality. We illustrate with two related but distinct examples: category essentialism, and attention to object history. We discuss the implications of each of these capacities for how children determine object value. Across a broad range of object types (natural and artifactual, real and virtual, durable and consumable), an item is evaluated very differently, depending on inferred qualities and context. In this way, children's early‐emerging conceptual frameworks influence how objects attain both psychological and monetary value, and may have important implications for which messages children find most persuasive.

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Adults differ in the extent to which they find spending money to be distressing; "tightwads" find spending money painful, and "spendthrifts" do not find spending painful enough. This affective dimension has been reliably measured in adults and predicts a variety of important financial behaviors and outcomes (e.g., saving behavior and credit scores). Although children's financial behavior has also received attention, feelings about spending have not been studied in children, as they have in adults. We measured the spendthrift-tightwad (ST-TW) construct in children for the first time, with a sample of 5-to 10-year-old children (N = 225). Children across the entire age range were able to reliably report on their affective responses to spending and saving, and children's ST-TW scores were related to parent reports of children's temperament and financial behavior. Further, children's ST-TW scores were predictive of whether they chose to save or spend money in the lab, even after controlling for age and how much they liked the offered items. Our novel findings-that children's feelings about spending and saving can be measured from an early age and relate to their behavior with money-are discussed with regard to theoretical and practical implications.

Digital financial platforms have become an integral part of consumers' lives-resulting in the datafication of

We thank Deborah John, Lan Chaplin, and Daphna Oyserman for their insightful and generous responses. Each commentary seriously takes up the challenge we set forth at the end of our target article—how to link the research on children's concepts of object value to broader issues involving persuasion, including social influences on choices, behaviors, and values. In doing so, they build on our original paper in rich and exciting ways.

Behaving prosocially can increase wellbeing among both those performing a prosocial act as well as those receiving it, and yet people may experience some reluctance to engage in direct prosocial actions. We review emerging evidence suggesting that miscalibrated social cognition may create a psychological barrier that keeps people from behaving as prosocially as would be optimal for both their own and others’ wellbeing. Across a variety of interpersonal behaviors, those performing prosocial actions tend to underestimate how positively their recipients will respond. These miscalibrated expectations stem partly from divergent perspectives between prosocial actors and recipients, with actors attending relatively more to the competency of their actions and recipients attending relatively more to the warmth conveyed by them. Failing to fully appreciate the positive impact of prosociality on others may keep people from behaving more prosocially in their daily lives, to the detriment of both their own and others’ wellbeing.

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