Children's understanding of self-presentational display rules: Associations with mental-state understanding

The present research addressed children's understanding of self-presentational display rules: putting on false facial expressions in order to manipulate others' evaluations of the self. A sample of 4- to 6-year-olds was used to rest our hypothesis, that self-presentational display rules involve recursive cognition about others' mental states. Children completed a task measuring understanding of various display rules and additionally performed a second-order false-belief task. Results supported the hypothesis that an appreciation of second-order mental representation is associated with understanding self-presentational display rules but not with understanding prosocial display rules (designed to spare others' feelings). We discuss the likely interaction of social processes with the observed changes in mental-state understanding in relation to rile development of self-presentation.