Much of what people do is motivated by a concern with social evaluation. We argue that the process of figuring out what others value and making effective use of this information presents significant cognitive challenges. These challenges include reasoning about the relevance of different forms of information and making inferences about the mental lives of others. They also include modifying one’s behavior in light of whatever personal qualities appear to be valued in an effort to appeal to different audiences. We argue that the foundations of many of the important skills needed to meet these challenges are already in place early during childhood, but that the challenges themselves persist well into adulthood.

There is an increasing interest in how children understand structural inequality, which is inequality that is caused by environmental constraints within a society (Bonilla-Silva, 1997;Haslanger, 2016;Roberts & Rizzo, 2020;Ruck et al., 2019). Indeed, children's understanding of structural inequality has implications for how they reason about the causes of societal disparities and for their motivation to address them (

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The present research examined children's generalisations about people based on their decisions to conform to descriptive norms. This issue was examined in South Korea, where conformity tends to be highly valued. Younger (4–6 years) and older (9–11 years) children (total N = 197) were asked to evaluate the personal qualities of conformers and nonconformers. Results showed that children in both age groups rated nonconformers more negatively than conformers in terms of moral character, intelligence, popularity, and likeability. Ratings of conformers showed minimal age‐related change. In contrast, ratings of nonconformers were more positive with age, except for popularity ratings. This work sheds light on how children use information about conformity to make specific inferences about what individuals are generally like.

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