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Abstract
Research on judgment and decision-making (JDM) demonstrates that people deviate from rational decision-making, often times in predictable ways. Despite decades of research, the field has almost exclusively focused on adult populations. This dissertation underscores the value of integrating developmental science with decision-making research. A developmental framework offers unique insights into the early roots of JDM concepts, highlighting the conceptual antecedents involved in effective decision-making, the origins of JDM behaviours, the trajectory of JDM concepts, and the legitimacy of longstanding JDM assumptions. The three chapters in this dissertation speak to these insights, showcasing when in development people develop core JDM skills, as well as when people start to adhere to (or deviate from) rational, strategic or normative decisions. Chapter I explores the antecedents of negotiation skills in the U.S. and India, focusing on children’s (1) understanding that people can value resources differently, and (2) appreciation of people’s underlying interests. These findings highlight developmental and cross-cultural differences in children’s decision-making strategies. Moreover, they demonstrate situations in which children make decisions that align with (or sometimes go against) their own and others’ best interests. Chapter II documents situations in which children decide to opt out of learning new information even when it is beneficial and costless to obtain. I track children’s “strategic” avoidance, including situations where they engage in information avoidance to act in their own self-interest. Chapter III probes how children’s decisions and judgments about the world are influenced by their own unique contextual environment. In this chapter, I demonstrate that the information children extract from the world can be highly contextual and centered around their own experiences, contributing to biased perceptions about people’s access to wealth. Together, these findings highlight children’s propensity to make efficient decisions, but these findings also highlight situations in which children’s decisions can undermine their own interests or those of others.