939940

research-article2020
PSSXXX10.1177/0956797620939940Ma et al.Reputation Management

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Research Article PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Psychological Science

Delay of Gratification as Reputation 2020, Vol. 31(9) 1174­–1182

© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0956797620939940
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620939940
www.psychologicalscience.org/PS

Fengling Ma1, Dan Zeng1, Fen Xu1, Brian J. Compton2, and

Gail D. Heyman2
1
Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, and 2Department of Psychology,
University of California San Diego

Abstract
Although delay-of-gratification tasks have long been used as measures of self-control, recent evidence suggests that
performance on these tasks is also driven by rational decision processes. The present research examined whether
the effects of rational decision processes extend beyond costs and benefits embedded in the task itself to include
anticipated consequences for the child’s reputation. Across two studies, 3- and 4-year-olds from China (N = 273) were
assigned to a standard delay-of-gratification condition or to a reputation condition in which they were told that their
teacher or a peer would find out how long they had waited. Children waited longer in the reputation conditions and
longer in the teacher condition than in the peer condition. This is the first evidence that children’s performance on
a delay-of-gratification task is sensitive to reputational concerns and to the identity of potential evaluators of their
behavior.

Keywords
delay of gratification, social cognition, open data, preregistered

Received 11/26/19; Revision accepted 5/6/20

Delay-of-gratification tasks, in which young children are
presented with a choice between obtaining a smaller
reward immediately or waiting for a larger reward
(Shoda, Mischel, & Peake, 1990), have drawn the atten-
tion of the research community and the public at large.
One reason for the widespread interest is that longer
waiting times predict a diverse set of long-term out-
comes, including better stress tolerance and higher SAT
scores (Shoda et al., 1990). Although delay-of-gratification
tasks have traditionally been interpreted as measures of
the ability to exercise self-control, recent evidence sug-
gests that this account is an oversimplification (Watts,
Duncan, & Quan, 2018) and that it neglects the role
played by rational decision-making processes (Kidd,
Palmeri, & Aslin, 2013; McGuire & Kable, 2013). In the
present research, we sought to determine whether these
rational decision-making processes extend to a different
form of cost-benefit analysis: potential benefits to one’s
reputation. Specifically, we postulated that children’s
waiting times are sensitive to a desire to be perceived
favorably by other people, which we refer to as the repu-
tation hypothesis. The reputation hypothesis predicts that
children will associate longer waiting times with positive
social evaluations and will wait longer if they are told
that how long they wait will be conveyed to another
person.
Recent models of rational decision-making on delay-
of-gratification tasks point to the possibility that it may
not always be adaptive to wait for a desired outcome
and that the extent to which children are likely to wait
depends on a range of task-related factors, such as their
expectations about the magnitude of the promised
reward and when it will be delivered (McGuire & Kable,
2013) as well as the likelihood that it will never be deliv-
ered at all (Kidd et al., 2013; Michaelson & Munakata,
2016).
Corresponding Authors:
Fengling Ma, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Department of Psychology,
Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province 310018, China
E-mail: maer.fling@163.com
Gail D. Heyman, University of California San Diego, Department of
Psychology, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA 92093
E-mail: gheyman@ucsd.edu
Reputation Management 1175
There is evidence that children’s cost-benefit calcula-
tions are sensitive to information that relates to their
social identity. Using a minimal-groups paradigm, Doebel
and Munakata (2018) found that 3- to 5-year-old chil-
dren waited longer if they were told that members of
an in-group had waited a long time but members of an
out-group had not. This finding is consistent with evi-
dence that following group norms can have important
implications for group acceptance (Watson-Jones,
Whitehouse, & Legare, 2016; Wen, Herrmann, & Legare,
2016) as well as evidence of selective imitation of in-
group members, which has been documented among
children as young as 14 months (Buttelmann, Zmyj,
Daum, & Carpenter, 2013). However, it is far less clear
whether young children can make nonobvious infer-
ences about how different courses of action might affect
their relationships with familiar others and then use
these inferences to guide their behavior (see Sperber &
Baumard, 2012). Assessing this possibility speaks to the
developmental roots of reputation management, a social
skill that plays a fundamental role in allowing people
to coordinate and cooperate with each other (Engelmann,
Herrmann, & Tomasello, 2012, 2018; Engelmann, Over,
Herrmann, & Tomasello, 2013; Leimgruber, Shaw, Santos,
& Olson, 2012; Piazza, Bering, & Ingram, 2011; Shaw
et al., 2014).
We tested the reputation hypothesis in a delay-of-
gratification context by telling 3- and 4-year-olds that
their teacher or one of their peers would find out how
long they waited. Obtaining empirical support for the
reputation hypothesis would expand the scope of ratio-
nal considerations that can account for children’s
behavior on delay-of-gratification tasks and would con-
tribute to our understanding of children’s persistence
more broadly (see McGuire & Kable, 2013). In the pres-
ent research, we also sought to gain valuable informa-
tion about how social motivation functions within
real-world relationships by assessing children’s behav-
ior with reference to real people they care about and
interact with regularly (i.e., teachers and peers). This
approach maintained ecological validity in a controlled
experimental context.
Study 1
In a test of the reputation hypothesis, 3- and 4-year-old
preschool children in China participated in a sticker
version of the delay-of-gratification task (see Imuta,
Hayne, & Scarf, 2014; Ma, Chen, Xu, Lee, & Heyman,
2018). Children were given a choice of obtaining one
sticker immediately or waiting until the experimenter
returned and obtaining two stickers. In one of three
conditions, the standard condition, participants com-
pleted a standard version of the delay-of-gratification
task. There were also two reputation conditions in
which the experimenter provided additional informa-
tion: Children in the peer condition were told that one
of their friends would find out how long they had waited
for the sticker, and children in the teacher condition
were told that their teacher would find out how long
they had waited. As is typical in delay-of-gratification
tasks, participants were not told whether they should
wait or whether anyone else might prefer for them to
wait.
We predicted that children would wait the shortest
amount of time in the standard condition, an intermedi-
ate amount of time in the peer condition, and the lon-
gest amount of time in the teacher condition. We made
the latter prediction because we expected children to
care more about their teacher’s evaluation and would
assume that a teacher would value waiting more.
Method
Participants.  The final sample consisted of 193 chil-
dren between the ages of 3 and 4 years, each of whom
attended one of two preschools in Hangzhou, China, a
city with a population of about 9 million. There were 61
children in the standard condition (age: M = 4.32 years,
SD = 0.51, range = 3.61–4.99 years; 31 boys), 70 children
in the peer condition (age: M = 4.19 years, SD = 0.49,
range = 3.05–4.99 years; 36 boys), and 62 children in the
teacher condition (age: M = 4.18 years, SD = 0.52, range =
3.10–4.99 years; 31 boys). Children attended schools that
serve middle-class families. For the experimental manip-
ulation that we tested, there was no precedent in the lit-
erature to help us determine an appropriate sample size,
so we selected a sample size that would allow us to
detect relatively small effects. A total of 10 children were
excluded: four who decided not to continue after the
initial executive-function assessment phase and six who
said that they did not want to wait at all in the delay-of-
gratification task. The study was approved by the institu-
tional review board of Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, and
only children who gave their oral assent to participate
and had consent from parents or legal guardians were
included.
Procedure.  The procedure was conducted by a female
experimenter in individual sessions in a quiet room at the
child’s school, and each session was recorded by a hid-
den camera. The entire procedure was conducted in Chi-
nese, and the quotations that appear in this section are
translations. Each participant was randomly assigned to
one of the three conditions. The standard condition fol-
lowed the procedure used by Ma et al. (2018), in which
children have an opportunity to earn an extra sticker by
waiting. The peer and teacher conditions were identical
1176 Ma et al.
to the standard condition, except that participants were
also informed that either a peer or their teacher would be
told how long they had waited.
Each session began with a hammer-knocking exec-
utive-function task (a revised version of the peg-tapping
task; see Diamond & Taylor, 1996), which measures
components of executive function, such as inhibitory
control, that are thought to play an important role in
the ability to delay gratification (Blair, Granger, & Razza,
2005). This executive-function task also served as a
pretext to reward children with a sticker of their choice,
which helped to set up the delay-of-gratification task.
Children were shown a plastic hammer that matched
one held by the experimenter and were told, “Whenever
I knock the hammer once, I want you to knock it twice;
whenever I knock it twice, I want you to knock it once.”
The experimenter then presented two practice trials.
Eleven children failed the practice trials and were then
taught the rule a second time, at which point all of them
were able to follow the rule. After the practice trials, 16
scored trials that consisted of either 1 or 2 knocks each
were presented in the following order: 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1,
2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 2 (see Ma et al., 2018).
In all conditions, after concluding the executive-
function task, the experimenter said, “You can choose
one sticker right now, or if you wait until I come back,
you can have another sticker, too. Two stickers!” The
experimenter asked, “Do you want to wait for another
sticker?” A total of six children declined to wait. These
children did not continue in the study, and they were
excluded from the final sample. All of the other children
were told, “Okay, let’s continue. If you want to stop
waiting, then ring the bell and I will come back right
away, but you will get only this one sticker.” The experi-
menter asked the following three questions to make
sure that children understood the rule: (a) “How many
stickers will you get if you can wait here until I come
back?” (b) “What will you do if you want to stop wait-
ing for me?” and (c) “How many stickers will you get
if you ring the bell before I come back?” Most of the
children answered all three questions correctly on their
first attempt. The 15 children who did not were then
corrected and asked again, and at that point, all of these
children answered the three questions correctly. Most
of the incorrect answers concerned the second ques-
tion, for which several children just named the bell or
pointed to it without offering any further information.
Next, the experimenter said that she needed to leave.
She asked the child not to leave his or her seat and not
to play with the stickers. At this point, there was an
additional step for participants who were assigned to
the peer condition or the teacher condition. Children
in the peer condition were told, “Your friend [a child
who the participant had mentioned as being a friend
during the warm-up period] will find out how long you
wait.” Children in the teacher condition were told, “Your
teacher [the name of the child’s current teacher] will
find out how long you wait.”
After confirming that the participant understood that
he or she would need to wait to be able to obtain a
second sticker, the experimenter then left the room for
15 min or until the child rang the bell. The primary
dependent measure was the number of seconds the
child waited before the task ended because of either
(a) the child ringing the bell early and earning one
sticker or (b) the child waiting the full 15 min and earn-
ing two stickers (see Ma et al., 2018).
Results
We first examined the percentage of children who
waited long enough to obtain the second sticker, which
was 68% of the children in the teacher condition, 40%
of children in the peer condition, and 16% of children
in the standard condition. Kruskal-Wallis tests indicated
that the percentage of children who waited for the full
15 min differed across the three conditions, χ2(2, N =
193) = 33.33, p < .001. Pairwise comparisons indicated
that the percentage of children who waited was greater
in the teacher condition than in the peer condition,
χ2(1, N = 132) = 10.08, p < .01; greater in the teacher con-
dition than in the standard condition, χ2(1, N = 123) =
32.95, p < .001; and greater in the peer condition than
in the standard condition, χ2(1, N = 131) = 8.75, p < .01.
We next examined whether waiting times varied by
condition. Waiting times across the delay period were
not normally distributed1 because the data for children
who waited the full 15 min were right censored. There-
fore, we used the Mantel-Cox log-rank test to test for
differences in waiting times across the three conditions.2
There were significant differences across the three condi-
tions, Mantel-Cox χ2(2, N = 193) = 43.81, p < .001. Pair-
wise comparisons indicated that differences in waiting
times were significantly different between each pair of
conditions—between the teacher condition and the peer
condition: χ2(1, N = 132) = 13.33, p < .001; between the
teacher condition and the standard condition: χ2(1, N =
123) = 47.01, p < .001; between the peer condition and
the standard condition: χ2(1, N = 131) = 9.36, p < .01. As
predicted, children waited the longest in the teacher
condition (mean waiting time = 790.23 s, nonparametric
bootstrapped 95% confidence interval, or CI = [739.31,
841.14]), followed by the peer condition (mean waiting
time = 569.44 s, nonparametric bootstrapped 95% CI =
[492.77, 646.12]), with the shortest times in the standard
condition (mean waiting time = 409.10 s, nonparametric
bootstrapped 95% CI = [334.39, 483.81]; for the methods
of data analysis, see Michaelson & Munakata, 2016).
Figure 1 shows the percentage of children in each condi-
tion who waited as a function of time.
Reputation Management 1177
100
90
Percentage of Children Still Waiting
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0 100
Fig. 1.  Survival functions for the 900-s waiting period in Study 1, separately for each
condition.
In a final set of analyses, we examined the relation
between executive function and delay of gratification
(see Table 1). We first examined whether executive
function varied as a function of condition using a one-
way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with condition as
the independent variable and executive-function score
as the dependent variable. The results showed that
there was no significant effect of condition.
We then assessed the roles of executive function and
condition on waiting times in the delay-of-gratification
task (see Table 2) using a hierarchical Cox regression
model (see Duckworth, Tsukayama, & Kirby, 2013). Age
(in months) and gender were entered in the first step,
followed by executive function in the second step, and
condition (1 = teacher condition, 2 = peer condition,
3 = standard condition, with the standard condition as
the reference condition) in the third step. Waiting time
was the predicted variable. The first block showed a
significant effect of age, χ2(2, N = 193) = 13.41, p = .001,
with older children waiting longer. The second block
was significant, χ2(3, N = 193) = 21.90, p < .001, which
suggests that higher executive-function scores were
Table 1.  Mean Waiting Time and Executive-Function Score
for Each Condition in Study 1
Condition Waiting time
Teacher 790.23 (206.23)
Peer 569.44 (329.67)
Standard 409.10 (300.18)
Note: Waiting times are given in seconds. Standard deviations are
given in parentheses.
Teacher
Peer
Standard
200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
Waiting Time (s)
associated with longer waiting times. The third block
was also significant, χ2(5, N = 193) = 78.97, p < .001,
which suggests that even after analyses controlled for
age and executive function, condition affected chil-
dren’s waiting times. Specifically, compared with chil-
dren in the standard condition, children in the peer
condition were only 0.401 times as likely to stop wait-
ing, and children in the teacher condition were only
0.145 times as likely to stop waiting.
These findings support the reputation hypothesis.
Specifically, they indicate that the reputation-manage-
ment manipulation had a large effect on children’s
behavior and that it was stronger when the target audi-
ence was a teacher rather than a peer.
Study 2
Study 2 was designed to investigate whether the results
of Study 1 would extend to a version of the task that
uses a biologically relevant reward in the form of a
cookie. These types of rewards have typically been
used in classic delay-of-gratification studies (see
Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989), and biological rel-
evance is important to consider in light of theoretical
accounts that differentiate between affect-based and
cognition-based responses (Metcalfe & Mischel, 1999).
Executive-function score A second question that emerged from the results of
Study 1 was whether children might have waited longer
10.73 (4.02) in the reputation conditions simply because the concept
10.29 (4.45) of waiting was made salient in those conditions but not
10.44 (4.26) in the standard condition. This possibility was addressed
in Study 2 by telling children in all conditions that the
task was a waiting game.
1178 Ma et al.

Table 2.  Results of the Cox Regression Model for Study 1

Block and predictor b SE Wald Exp(b) 95% CI

1  
 Age −0.65 0.19 11.55*** 0.521 [0.357, 0.759]
 Gender −0.26 0.19 1.83 0.774 [0.534, 1.122]
2  
 Age −0.42 0.21 3.81 0.660 [0.434, 1.002]
 Gender −0.22 0.19 1.33 0.804 [0.554, 1.166]
  Executive function −0.06 0.02 7.15** 0.939 [0.897, 0.983]
3  
 Age −0.71 0.22 10.58*** 0.491 [0.320, 0.754]
 Gender −0.17 0.19 0.77 0.846 [0.582, 1.229]
  Executive function −0.07 0.02 9.01** 0.932 [0.891, 0.976]
 Condition 51.44***  
  Condition (1) −1.93 0.28 49.09*** 0.145 [0.084, 0.249]
  Condition (2) −0.91 0.22 17.90*** 0.401 [0.262, 0.612]

Note: CI = confidence interval.

**p < .01. ***p < .001.

Method staff at the school expressed a desire to minimize the

Participants.  Following the preregistration for this
study (https://aspredicted.org/ht93y.pdf), we recruited a
final sample of 80 children. These children did not par-
ticipate in Study 1, but each attended one of the same
preschools. Half of the children were assigned to a stan-
dard condition (age: M = 4.53 years, SD = 0.49, range =
3.24–5.13 years; 24 boys), and the other half were assigned
to a teacher condition (age: M = 4.57 years, SD = 0.45,
range = 3.20–5.12 years; 19 boys). In contrast to Study 1,
there was no peer condition. The sample size was deter-
mined on the basis of the results of Study 1. A total of 27
other children were initially recruited for the study but
then excluded: five who decided not to continue after the
initial executive-function assessment phase and 22 who
said that they did not want to wait at all in the delay-of-
gratification task.3 Children who said that they did not
want to try to wait offered a wide range of explanations,
such as not liking the kind of cookie they were offered or
the belief that it would be inappropriate for a child to eat
more than one treat. The study was approved by the insti-
tutional review board of Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, and
only children who gave their oral assent to participate and
had consent from parents or legal guardians were included.
Procedure.  The procedure was the same as in Study 1,
with the following exceptions. First, the reward took the
form of cookies rather than stickers, with the initial
cookie being sealed inside a transparent snack box and
placed in front of the child. Second, as noted above, each
participant was randomly assigned to one of two condi-
tions, standard and teacher, rather than the three condi-
tions of Study 1. The peer condition was omitted because
number of children who would be offered cookies in light
of concerns about possible food allergies and because
some parents were apprehensive about their children
being exposed to what they considered unhealthy food.
Third, in both conditions, the experimenter described the
task as a waiting game. Specifically, she told children,
“Let’s play a waiting game. You can get this snack right
now, or if you wait until I come back, you can get another
snack. Two snacks!” An additional manipulation check
was added to make sure that children remembered this
instruction: “What game are we playing now?” Most of the
children answered all four questions correctly on their
first attempt, but 13 children got at least one question
wrong. For these children, all of the instructions and
questions were repeated, and all 13 were then able to
answer each of the questions correctly.
Results
We first examined the percentage of children who
waited long enough to obtain the second snack, which
was 58% of the children in the teacher condition and
23% of the children in the standard condition. A Mann-
Whitney test indicated that the percentage was higher
in the teacher condition than in the standard condition,
Mann-Whitney U = 520.00, p < .001.
We next examined whether waiting times varied by
condition. Waiting times across the delay period were
not normally distributed 4 because the data for children
who waited the full 15 min were right censored. There-
fore, a Mantel-Cox log-rank test was used to test the
differences in waiting times between the two condi-
tions.5 There were significant differences between the
Reputation Management 1179
100
90
Percentage of Children Still Waiting
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Fig. 2.  Survival functions for the 900-s waiting period in Study 2, separately for each
condition.
conditions, Mantel-Cox χ2(1, N = 80) = 12.35, p < .001.
As predicted, children waited longer in the teacher
condition (mean waiting time = 634.90 s, nonparametric
bootstrapped 95% CI = [528.79, 741.01]) than in the
standard condition (mean waiting time = 341.80 s, non-
parametric bootstrapped 95% CI = [234.93, 446.67]).
Figure 2 shows the percentage of children in each con-
dition who waited as a function of time.
In a final set of analyses, we examined the relation
between executive function and delay of gratification
(see Table 3). We first examined whether executive
function varied by condition using a one-way ANOVA
with condition as the independent variable and exec-
utive-function score as the dependent variable. The
results showed that there was no significant effect of
condition.
We then assessed the roles of executive function and
condition on delay of gratification using a hierarchical
Cox regression model. Age (in months) and gender
were entered in the first step, followed by executive
function in the second step, and condition (1 = teacher
condition, 2 = standard condition, with the standard
condition as the reference condition) in the third step.
Waiting times were the predicted variable. The first
Table 3.  Mean Waiting Time and Executive-Function Score
for Each Condition in Study 2
Condition Waiting time
Teacher 634.90 (346.76)
Standard 341.80 (342.72)
Note: Waiting times are given in seconds. Standard deviations are
given in parentheses.
Teacher
Standard
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
Waiting Time (s)
block showed a significant effect of age, χ2(2, N = 80) =
6.74, p < .05, with older children waiting longer. The
second block was significant, χ2(3, N = 80) = 24.59,
p < .001, which suggests that the increased executive-
function ability was associated with longer waiting
times. The third block was also significant, χ 2(4, N =
80) = 38.82, p < .001, which suggests that, as in Study
1, even after analyses controlled for age and executive
function, the reputation manipulation influenced chil-
dren’s waiting times. Specifically, compared with chil-
dren in the standard condition, children in the teacher
condition were only 0.346 times as likely to stop waiting
(see Table 4).
The results of Study 2 provide further evidence for
the reputation hypothesis and show that it extends to
a food-reward context. The results also indicate that
the effects of Study 1 were not simply due to children
in the standard condition being unaware that the task
had anything to do with waiting.
General Discussion
We evaluated the reputation hypothesis, which pro-
poses that a desire to be perceived favorably by other
people can influence children’s waiting times on delay-
of-gratification tasks. In Study 1, preschool-age children
were told that they could either have one sticker right
away or wait and obtain a second one as well. Each child
Executive-function score was assigned either to a standard delay-of-gratification
condition or to one of two reputation conditions, in
11.38 (3.42) which the child was told that either the teacher or a
10.88 (4.68) peer would find out how long he or she had waited.
In Study 2, a new group of children was told that they
could have one cookie right away or wait to obtain a
1180 Ma et al.
Table 4.  Results of the Cox Regression Model for Study 2
Block and predictor b SE
1
 Age −0.63 0.29
 Gender 0.41 0.30
2
 Age −0.03 0.32
 Gender  0.44 0.30
  Executive function −0.16 0.04
3
 Age −0.23 0.32
 Gender 0.33 0.30
  Executive function −0.15 0.04
 Condition −1.06 0.32
Note: CI = confidence interval.
*p < .05. ***p < .001.
second one, and each child was assigned to a standard
delay-of-gratification condition or a teacher condition.
Both studies showed strong reputation effects. For this
pattern of results to be produced, children in the two
reputation conditions presumably needed to infer that
the teacher or peer would (a) consider the information
to be relevant (a reasonable assumption according to
the maxim of relevance; Grice, 1975) and (b) use the
information to make an evaluation in which longer
waiting times are judged more favorably.
The present results add to evidence that rational
decision processes play a role in children’s ability to
wait for things they want by showing that children’s
waiting times are sensitive to the expected judgments
of other people. These findings shed light on children’s
motivation to engage in behaviors that promote affili-
ation with their social group (Wen et al., 2016) by sug-
gesting that one early-emerging goal is to promote their
reputation within the group. This is particularly notable
given that only a small number of experimental studies
to date have found that children younger than 5 years
can systematically modify their behavior depending on
whether or not an audience is present (Botto & Rochat,
2018; Rapp, Engelmann, Herrmann, & Tomasello, 2017;
Zhao, Heyman, Chen, & Lee, 2018; see Engelmann &
Rapp, 2018). Our findings show that young children
can be responsive to reputational concerns that relate
to persistence, even if the expected evaluator of their
behavior is not physically present (see Rapp, Engelmann,
Herrmann, & Tomasello, 2019).
In Study 1, children waited longer when the indi-
vidual who was to be told how long they waited was
identified as a teacher rather than as a peer, which is
noteworthy because the capacity to adjust one’s behav-
ior depending on the audience has been identified as
a hallmark of a fully strategic reputation-management
Wald Exp(b) 95% CI
 
4.79* 0.534 [0.305, 0.936]
1.92 1.506 [0.843, 2.689]
 
0.01 0.974 [0.522, 1.818]
2.21 1.559 [0.868, 2.800]
16.99*** 0.849 [0.785, 0.918]
 
0.54 0.793 [0.427, 1.473]
1.20 1.391 [0.771, 2.507]
16.10*** 0.863 [0.803, 0.927]
11.26*** 0.346 [0.186, 0.643]
ability (Engelmann et  al., 2013; see also Watling &
Banerjee, 2007). It is also notable that systematic repu-
tational effects were observed in relation to peers.
Although children might have inferred that teachers
would approve of longer waiting times on the basis of
seeing teachers encourage patience in other contexts,
this explanation is less plausible for peers. It seems
likely that children either applied their understanding
of adults’ values to the peer or inferred from the task
context that the peer would value waiting (e.g., by not-
ing that waiting is being rewarded on the task and that
rewarded behaviors tend to be socially valued).
Executive-function scores predicted waiting times in
both studies, which suggests that young children need
to have certain basic cognitive capacities in place to be
able to wait for an extended period of time. However,
the results from the reputation conditions indicate that
they were capable of waiting much longer than has
typically been seen in the delay-of-gratification litera-
ture. Perhaps children would wait even longer still if
they were directly told that waiting is socially valued
(see Leonard, Berkowitz, & Shusterman, 2014) or if their
waiting behavior were directly observed.
It is not clear why fewer children were willing to
begin waiting for a second cookie in Study 2 than for a
second sticker in Study 1. Although this might simply
reflect differences in the relative desirability of the
rewards, some participants offered normative explana-
tions, such as indicating that children should not eat
more than one cookie, which points to the potential
role of cultural learning. A related question for future
research is how the present results will generalize across
cultures. Because teachers in China tend to be highly
respected (see Li, 2005), it would not be surprising if
Chinese children were more motivated to impress their
teachers than are children in some other countries.
Reputation Management 1181
One limitation of this research is that our paradigm
did not allow us to assess whether reputational con-
cerns affect children’s performance on standard delay-
of-gratification tasks. It is possible that children are
motivated to wait longer when they care how they are
perceived by the experimenter and think that the exper-
imenter will be pleased if they wait longer. This pos-
sibility could be evaluated by developing a new
paradigm to manipulate children’s beliefs about whether
the experimenter will find out how long they have
waited. If reputational effects do indeed play a role, it
will be important to examine whether individual dif-
ferences in children’s reputational concerns contribute
to the predictive power of these tasks.
The present research raises important questions
about how to interpret studies that use the delay-of-
gratification paradigm, and it may have implications for
understanding other measures of self-control as well
(see Loewenstein, 2018). Moreover, the present findings
contribute to our understanding of the rational deci-
sion-making processes that affect waiting times on
delay-of-gratification tasks by showing that children’s
cost-benefit analyses can go beyond factors associated
with the explicit costs and benefits that serve to struc-
ture the task. Finally, the results shed light on the ontol-
ogy of reputation management by providing evidence
that children as young as 3 years can make sophisti-
cated inferences about how they will be judged by
important people in their lives and act on these infer-
ences in a way that shows sensitivity to the identity of
their potential audience.
Transparency
Action Editor: Bill von Hippel
Editor: D. Stephen Lindsay
Author Contributions
F. Ma worked out the details of the study design and
supervised the data collection and analysis. D. Zeng col-
lected the data. F. Xu worked with F. Ma on the design.
G. D. Heyman conceived the study hypothesis and the
general strategy for testing it. G. D. Heyman and B. J.
Compton drafted the manuscript. All the authors approved
the final manuscript for submission.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of
interest with respect to the authorship or the publication
of this article.
Funding
This research was supported by grants to F. Ma from the
National Natural Science Foundation of China (31400892),
the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province
(LY17C090010), and the China Scholarship Council.
Open Practices
All data for Studies 1 and 2 have been made publicly avail-
able via the Open Science Framework and can be accessed
at https://osf.io/gjh3c. The design and analysis plans for
Study 2 were preregistered at https://aspredicted.org/
ht93y.pdf. The complete Open Practices Disclosure for this
article can be found at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/
suppl/10.1177/0956797620939940. This article has received
the badges for Open Data and Preregistration. More infor-
mation about the Open Practices badges can be found at
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/
badges.
 
ORCID iD
Gail D. Heyman https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7764-3205
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Joseph Kable, Cristine Legare, and Piotr
Winkielman for helpful comments on an earlier version of
the manuscript.
Notes
1. Three Shapiro-Wilk tests confirmed that the distributions of
the mean waiting times in the teacher, peer, and standard con-
ditions were not normal (ps < .001).
2. Results were similar using more conventional methods to test
differences among conditions: A one-way analysis of variance
(ANOVA), F(2, 190) = 27.65, p < .001, and post hoc tests (least
significant difference) indicated that the differences between
each pair of conditions were significant (ps < .01).
3. The decision to exclude children who said that they did not
want to wait was consistent with what was done in Study 1,
but because of an oversight, it was not specifically listed as an
exclusion in the preregistration for Study 2. We did not include
these participants in our analyses because the information
that constituted the experimental manipulation was presented
only after this point in the procedure. However, all differences
between conditions and executive-function effects remained
statistically significant when these 22 children were included.
4. Two Shapiro-Wilk tests confirmed that the distributions of the
mean waiting times in the teacher and standard conditions were
not normal (ps < .001).
5. Results were similar using a one-way ANOVA, F(1, 78) =
14.46, p < .001.
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