title: Social Preference in Preschoolers: Effects of Morphological Self-Similarity and Familiarity.
abstract: Adults prefer to interact with others that are similar to themselves. Even slight facial self-resemblance can elicit trust towards strangers. Here we investigate if preschoolers at the age of 5 years already use facial self-resemblance when they make social judgments about others. We found that, in the absence of any additional knowledge about prospective peers, children preferred those who look subtly like themselves over complete strangers. Thus, subtle morphological similarities trigger social preferences well before adulthood.
authors.affiliation: Research Group for Comparative Cognitive Anthropology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.|Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Jena, Jena, Germany.
authors.forename: Nadja
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Richter
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science & Research Institute of Visual Computing, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Tiddeman
authors.affiliation: Research Group for Comparative Cognitive Anthropology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.|Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.|Department of Early Child Development and Culture, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Daniel B M
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Haun
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D019066:Facies; D006801:Humans; D012919:Social Behavior