Normative foundations of reciprocity in preschoolers

Schadenfreude or empathy? Children's emotional responses to the physical pain and pleasure of prosocial and antisocial others

Adults' emotional reactions to the pain and pleasure of others are influenced by the moral character of those individuals. However, it remains unclear whether children's emotional responses also show such selectivity. To investigate this, we compared 4- to 8-year-old children's emotional responses to the physical pain and pleasure of prosocial versus antisocial puppets. In Study 1, children reported unhappiness after witnessing the pain of the prosocial and antisocial puppets but reported less unhappiness after witnessing the pain of the antisocial puppet. In Study 2, children reported happiness after witnessing the pleasure of both puppets but reported being less happy for the antisocial puppet. These results suggest that children are less likely to empathize with antisocial individuals. Meanwhile, children did not display Schadenfreude (pleasure at others' pain) or Gluckschmerz (displeasure at others' pleasure) toward antisocial individuals in our studies. Moreover, the selectivity of children's emotional responses disappeared after we manipulated the physical competence rather than the moral character of the puppets in Study 3. Our findings help to reveal the moral selectivity of emotional responses to others' pleasure and pain during early childhood.

Why help others? Insights from rodent to human early childhood research

Helping behavior are actions aiming at assisting another individual in need or to relieve their distress. The occurrence of this behavior not only depends on automated physiological mechanisms, such as imitation or emotional contagion, that is, the individual's emotion and physiological state matching with others, but also needs motivation to sustain. From a comparative and developmental perspective, we discover that the motivation for helping behavior has a deep foundation both phylogenetically and ontogenetically. For example, empathic concern for others, relieving personal distress and the desire for social contact are universal motivations across rodents, non-human primates and human early childhoods. Therefore, a circle-layered model integrating evidences for motivation for helping behavior from rodent to human early childhood research is proposed: the inner circle contains the emotional-behavioral system and the outer circle contains the affective-cognitive system. The application of this model has significance for both behavioral neuroscience research and cultivating prosocial behavior in human society.

Greasing (small) palms: Early rejection of bribery

We tested when U.S. children reject bribery, and whether their rejections vary by public versus private setting. Six- to 10-year-olds (224 children, 118 boys, 106 girls, majority-White) participated across four experiments, in which participants indicated whether a contest judge should accept a contestant's financial gift. Children conveyed their preferences while in public or in private (in the presence or absence of an adult experimenter). Children's rejections of bribes were found to increase with age. Notably, younger children's acceptance rate was higher when the experimenter was present than in their absence; in contrast, older children showed comparable rejection rates across settings. Limitations in children's early reasoning about bribery, including the reputational and moral implications of accepting bribes in public, are discussed.

Friendship is more than strategic reciprocity: Preschoolers' selective sharing with friends cannot be reduced to strategic concerns

The current study investigated whether children share especially much with their friends when sharing can be reciprocated (strategic sharing) or whether friendship and strategic reciprocity are independent factors in predicting children's sharing. If the former is the case, children should prefer their friend relatively more in a situation where the friend can reciprocate than in a situation without the possibility for reciprocity. In two experiments, 3- and 5-year-old participants (N = 270) could distribute stickers between themselves and three recipients: a friend, a child who would join the kindergarten group the next day, and a stranger. Half of the children were led to believe that their generosity could be reciprocated, and the other half were not. In Experiment 1, this was implemented by anonymous and nonanonymous sharing. In Experiment 2, the possibility of reciprocity or lack thereof was explicitly mentioned. The results show that participants across both age groups shared more resources with their friend than with less familiar recipients. Potential reciprocity affected 5-year-olds' sharing but not 3-year-olds' sharing-but only if reciprocity was explicitly mentioned (Experiment 2). Importantly, the preference for the friend was independent of the possibility to be reciprocated for all children. The current study shows that friendship and strategic reciprocity are relevant but probably largely independent factors for children's sharing. That is, the preference to share with friends cannot be reduced to strategic considerations.

Paying it back and forward: The impact of experiencing and observing others' sharing and stinginess on preschoolers' own sharing behavior and expectations

Recent research suggests that children's sharing behavior is affected by experiencing or observing others' sharing. These effects have been studied within research on the development of reciprocity and the effects of social modeling. In the current study, direct and indirect types of reciprocity and social modeling were assessed in 3- to 6-year-old children in three experiments (overall N = 382). In each experiment, we explored whether negative and positive social behavior were similarly paid back and forward in each of the different types of reciprocity. Moreover, we assessed the extent to which children reciprocated toward the protagonist who had performed the actual behavior and toward a neutral other. In Experiment 1, children experienced another's sharing behavior as recipients and could then allocate resources to this character and a neutral other. In Experiment 2, children observed another's sharing behavior and could then allocate resources to this character and a neutral other. In Experiment 3, children were asked to predict another protagonist's sharing in the same context as in Experiment 1. Overall, children treated the protagonist and the neutral other similarly and predicted others to do the same. Yet, they were more likely to reciprocate negative acts in indirect types of reciprocity. The results are interpreted with respect to the impact of observational learning and representational development on children's social behavior.