Not just if, but how much: Children and adults use cost and need to make evaluations about generosity across contexts

Cost-benefits analysis of social interactions: Familiarity modulates the estimation of individual contributions to joint action

Every day, we engage in activities that require collaboration and assistance from others. Social interactions with children are distinct because they frequently result in partners contributing different amounts of effort. This study investigates whether children and adults estimate they will have to invest different amounts of effort when engaging in joint tasks compared to doing the same task by themselves. Specifically, if this engagement is with a familiar co-actor. In 4 Experiments, children and adults estimated the weight of objects when they anticipated that they would be lifted alone and when they thought they would have help. Children and adults estimated the weight of three clear baskets carrying different weights (light, medium, and heavy). The estimated weight of objects varied for adults and children depending on whether they thought they would lift alone or together. Children reliably perceived objects as lighter when they expected help from their parents compared to lifting them alone or with the help from adults. Parents, in turn, estimated objects would be heavier when they were helping their child. Overall, results suggest that we analyze the costs and benefits of helping another person and the social bond we have with them before engaging in joint actions.

Children's cost-benefit analysis about agents who act for the greater good

Acting for the greater good often involves paying a personal cost to benefit the collective. In two studies, we investigate how children (N = 184, Mage = 8.02 years, SD = 1.15, Range = 6.00-9.99 years) use information about costs and consequences when reasoning about agents who act for the greater good. Children were told about a novel community, in which individuals could pay a cost to prevent a consequence (e.g., holding up an umbrella to prevent rain from flooding the village). In Study 1, children saw two scenarios, one where costs were minor and consequences were major, and one where the opposite was true (major cost, minor consequence). Children in the former condition expected more agents to engage in costly behavior and judged refusal to engage in costly behavior as less permissible. In Study 2 we separately manipulated cost and consequence to see which factor influences children's judgments most - cost or consequence. Here, children expected agents to pay a minor cost regardless of consequence, and only expected agents to pay a major cost when consequence was also major. In their permissibility judgments, children judged refusal to engage in costly behavior to be less permissible when consequences were major than when they were minor, regardless of cost. These findings suggest that children are making principled judgments about acting for the greater good - both cost and consequence determine when we are expected to act, but consequence seems to be a particularly key factor in deciding when inaction is permissible.

Toddlers' Helping Behavior Is Affected by the Effortful Costs Associated With Helping Others

Although the presence of early helping behavior has been firmly established, it is unclear to what extent children are willing to adopt costs to help others, as well as how this willingness changes as children get older. Canadian 21- to 36-month-olds (N = 48) participated in four helping tasks varying in the type and degree of effort required to help (lifting force, cognitive load, the number of steps in a task, and pushing force). When costs were lower, toddlers were not only more likely to help but also provided help more readily and helped in ways that prioritized others' needs. Importantly, we found that age and how costly helping was to individual children each uniquely predicted high-cost helping, but not low-cost helping. Overall, we demonstrate that toddlers' helping is sensitive to a variety of effortful costs, while simultaneously demonstrating that maturation and individual costs appear to uniquely influence high-cost helping.

The costs and benefits of kindness for kids

What do children think makes an act kind? Which kind acts are children likely to perform? Previous research with adults suggests that the kindness of acts depends largely on the benefit provided and to a lesser extent on the cost incurred, and that adults are more likely to perform low-cost, high-benefit kind acts. In the current study, children (9-12 years, n = 945) and teens (13-17 years, n = 939) rated the benefit, cost, kindness, and likelihood of performing 173 acts of kindness, and adults (18+ years, n = 891) rated how beneficial, costly, kind, and likely the acts would be for young people to perform. Among children and teens, benefit but not cost predicted the kindness of acts, and benefit positively predicted, but cost negatively predicted, performance (for "kindness quotients" of 61% and 65%, respectively). Among adults, benefit and cost predicted the kindness of acts, and cost, but not benefit, negatively predicted performance (for a kindness quotient of 59%). The results for children and teens are similar to those from previous research with adults; however, adults are more sensitive to cost when rating kindness, are less sensitive to benefit when rating performance by young people, and are less likely to think young people will perform acts of kindness overall. In practical terms, the results suggest that recommending cost-effective acts may be the best way to encourage children to be kinder.

Toddlers Prefer Agents Who Help Those Facing Harder Tasks

Capacities to understand and evaluate others' actions are fundamental to human social life. Infants and toddlers are sensitive to the costs of others' actions, infer others' values from the costs of the actions they take, and prefer those who help others to those who hinder them, but it is largely unknown whether and how cost considerations inform early understanding of third-party prosocial actions. In three experiments (N = 94), we asked whether 16-month-old toddlers value agents who selectively help those who need it most. Presented with two agents who attempted two tasks, toddlers preferentially looked to and touched someone who helped the agent in greater need, both when one agent's task required more effort and when the tasks were the same but one agent was weaker. These results provide evidence that toddlers engage in need-based evaluations of helping, applying their understanding of action utilities to their social evaluations.