Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

How do we learn about who is good at what? Others’ compe-tence is unobservable and often must be inferred from observ-able evidence, such as failures and successes. However, eventhe same performance can indicate different levels of compe-tence depending on the context, and objective evaluation met-rics are not always available. Building on recent advances onchildren’s use of emotion as information, here we ask whetherexpressions of surprise inform inferences about competence.Participants saw scenarios (sports, academics) where two stu-dents achieved identical outcomes but a teacher showed sur-prise to one student and no surprise to the other. In Exp.1,adults inferred that the successful student who elicited theteacher’s surprise was less competent than the other student,but this pattern reversed when both students failed. Exp.2 (4-9-year-olds) finds initial evidence for such inferences in school-aged children. These findings have implications for promotinghealthy social comparisons and preventing acquisition of neg-ative stereotypes from non-verbal cues.