Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Research on wishful thinking suggests that desires bias adult’s probability judgments. Previous research has yet toexplore if this extends to young children. In Experiment 1, 260 4- and 6-year-olds in the U.S. and Peru played a card game,where selecting a desirable card was unlikely. In Experiment 2, 200 4- to 6-year-old children were shown a bag of plasticeggs; a few contained desirable prizes. Children were asked to make predictions about what card / egg would be randomlyselected. Answers were compared to control conditions in which probability was comparable, but children had no reason todesire a specific outcome. In control conditions, children tended to state that the majority card/ egg would be selected. In theexperimental conditions, children were more likely to state that the desirable (and improbable) card/ egg would be selected.Results suggest that a desire bias extends to children as young as 4.