Preschool Children's Anticipation of Recipients' Emotions Affects Their Resource Allocation

Children's beliefs about the emotional consequences of norm adherence and violation

What behaviors make people happy? In the current studies, we investigated 4- to 7-year-old children's (N = 148) emotion attributions for people who follow or violate a conventional norm when doing so aligns or conflicts with other psychological motivations. In Study 1, we tested whether children believe people are happier when they desire (vs. do not desire) adhering to (vs. violating) a norm. In Study 2, we tested whether children believe people are happier when freely choosing (vs. being told) to adhere to (vs. violate) a norm. In both studies, children predicted the highest happiness levels for people who followed norms even when doing so conflicted with other psychological motivators (e.g., wanting or freely choosing to do something). Children also explained their emotion attributions by making reference to norms more often than to desires or personal choices. Results are discussed in terms of implications for children's own norm adherence and early socialization practices in Western cultures.

Sharing and Allocation in Preschool Children: The Roles of Theory of Mind, Anticipated Emotions, and Consequential Emotions

This study investigates the impact of theory of mind, anticipated emotions before actual behavior, and consequential emotions following the behavior on sharing and allocation behavior in 4-6-year-old children. In Experiment 1, 95 children were randomly assigned to three conditions (external emotion expectancy condition, internal emotion expectancy condition, and control condition) to explore the role of cognition and emotions in children's sharing and allocation behaviors. Experiment 2 employed a dictator game to further validate the influence of theory of mind and consequential emotions on behavior. The findings indicated that both anticipated and consequential emotions influence sharing behavior, but neither serves as a key predictor of allocation behavior. Theory of mind influences children's sharing behavior and is related to the fairness of allocation. Children with higher levels of theory of mind tend to rate consequential emotions more positively, while those with lower ratings of consequential emotions are more likely to reconsider sharing after reflection. Notably, theory of mind and emotional factors demonstrate distinct motivational effects on children's prosocial sharing and resource allocation, with negative emotions exhibiting a more pronounced impact on decision-making processes.

Fostering Prosociality in Refugee Children: An Intervention With Rohingya Children

Prosocial behavior is a distinguishing characteristic of human nature. Although prosocial behaviors emerge early in development, contextual factors play an important role in how these behaviors are manifested over development. A large body of research focuses on the trajectory of prosocial development across diverse cultures and investigating contexts that foster it. Against this backdrop of developmental research endeavoring to understand and enhance the cooperative side of humanity, is the catastrophic impact of profoundly negative forces on social-emotional development for children forced to flee from violent conflict. Close to half a million Rohingya children, whose families were forced to flee genocide in Myanmar, now live in the largest refugee camp in the world. To examine the resilience of human prosociality in the face of extreme adversity, we documented initial levels of prosociality in Rohingya refugee children living in a mega-camp (Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh) and the extent to which those levels were improved following a multifaceted intervention designed to foster prosociality. The research was a partnership between Rohingya community members with lived experience, humanitarian practitioners, and developmental researchers. A sample of 152 Rohingya children (5-12 years) participated in pre- and postintervention assessments of prosocial behaviors and related cognitive-affective processes. The 10-day collaboration-based intervention was implemented between November 2021 and January 2022 by Rohingya researchers. Birthplace was used as a proxy measure of trauma level. Children born in Myanmar (N = 88) directly experienced relatively higher levels of trauma (genocide, forced migration) than children who were born in the camp after their families fled from Myanmar (N = 64). Children were individually tested pre- and postintervention with a task battery, including a helping (Origami) and two sharing tasks (Dictator Game [DG], Forced Choice sharing) measuring prosocial behavior. Assessments of related cognitive-affective processes included measures of empathic responding and emotion perspective-taking in story tasks (Imagine, Judgment) and executive function (EF) skills (Younger: Hearts & Flowers; Older: Dimensional Change Card Sorting). Small group intervention sessions conducted over 10 days targeted these prosocial behaviors and cognitive-affective processes and were based on collaborative activities, emotion perspective taking and EF skills training with the same partner throughout the intervention phase. We used latent change modeling to examine initial levels (preintervention) and intervention-related changes in these measures from pre- to postintervention. Prosocial responding was found across all measures (preintervention) and improvements (pre- to postintervention change) were apparent across most measures. Age and birthplace variables were significant predictors of initial levels and intervention-related change. Initial levels: Regarding age, older children (9-12 years) showed higher levels than younger children (5-8 years) of sharing in the Forced Choice task but lower levels in the DG. Older children also showed higher levels of empathic responding when asked to report how they would feel and respond to another person's misfortune in the Imagine task. Regarding birthplace, prior to the intervention camp-born children showed higher levels than Myanmar-born children of helping in the Origami task and reported more behavioral responses indicating how they would respond to misfortune in the Imagine task. In contrast, Myanmar-born children had higher levels of sharing in the DG and consistently chose equality over inequality in the Forced Choice sharing task, even when their partner would receive more, indicating a pattern of generosity in these children. Myanmar-born children had lower levels than camp-born children on EF measures. Intervention-related change: Regarding age, older but not younger children were more likely to increase choices for equality over inequality on the Forced Choice sharing task following the intervention. Regarding birthplace and helping, camp-born children increased behaviors that helped their partner make origami shapes themselves ("how-to" helping), whereas Myanmar-born children increased behavior that took over folding for their partner ("do-for" helping). For sharing tasks, Myanmar-born but not camp-born children increased sharing in the DG and showed an increased pattern of generosity in Forced Choice sharing task. In the Imagine story task, children born in Myanmar were more likely than those born in camp to increase empathic responding (i.e., imagining how they would feel). Children born in Myanmar showed less improvement on EF measures than children born in the camp. Taken together, these findings provide evidence that in a context of extreme adversity, Rohingya children exhibited prosociality and benefitted from a multifaceted intervention. Our research adds credence to the view that human prosociality is a fundamental characteristic of humanity that not only survives but can be enhanced in even the most adverse of childhood environments. Our multifaceted intervention, which was implemented within a collaborative social context and targeted prosocial behaviors and related cognitive-affective processes, was designed to be easily implemented within existing psychosocial support programs in refugee contexts. As the numbers of children affected by violent conflict and forced migration rise alarmingly worldwide, there is a critical need to expand research partnerships that aim to improve developmental outcomes for these millions of children.

The impact of sufferers' wealth status on pain perceptions: Its development and relation to allocation of healthcare resources

Wealth-based disparities in health care wherein the poor receive undertreatment in painful conditions are a prominent issue that requires immediate attention. Research with adults suggests that these disparities are partly rooted in stereotypes associating poor individuals with pain insensitivity. However, whether and how children consider a sufferer's wealth status in their pain perceptions remains unknown. The present work addressed this question by testing 4- to 9-year-olds from the US and China. In Study 1 (N = 108, 56 girls, 79% White), US participants saw rich and poor White children experiencing identical injuries and indicated who they thought felt more pain. Although 4- to 6-year-olds responded at chance, children aged seven and above attributed more pain to the poor than to the rich. Study 2 with a new sample of US children (N = 111, 56 girls, 69% White) extended this effect to judgments of White adults' pain. Pain judgments also informed children's prosocial behaviors, leading them to provide medical resources to the poor. Studies 3 (N = 118, 59 girls, 100% Asian) and 4 (N = 80, 40 girls, 100% Asian) found that, when evaluating White and Asian people's suffering, Chinese children began to attribute more pain to the poor than to the rich earlier than US children. Thus, unlike US adults, US children and Chinese children recognize the poor's pain from early on. These findings add to our knowledge of group-based beliefs about pain sensitivity and have broad implications on ways to promote equitable health care. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Four studies examined whether 4- to 9-year-old children's pain perceptions were influenced by sufferers' wealth status. US children attributed more pain to White individuals of low wealth status than those of high wealth status by age seven. Chinese children demonstrated an earlier tendency to attribute more pain to the poor (versus the rich) compared to US children. Children's wealth-based pain judgments underlied their tendency to provide healthcare resources to people of low wealth status.

From action to ethics: A process-relational approach to prosocial development

Explaining how children first become active prosocial and then later moral agents requires, we argue, beginning with action and interaction with others. We take a process-relational perspective and draw on developmental systems theory in arguing that infants cannot be born knowing about prosociality or morality or anything else. Instead, they are born with emerging abilities to act and react. Their biological embodiment links them to their environment and creates the social environment in which they develop. A clear distinction between biological and social levels cannot be made in the context of ongoing development because they are thoroughly interwoven in a bidirectional system in which they mutually create each other. We focus on infants' emerging ability to interact and develop within a human developmental system, and prosociality and morality emerge at the level of interaction. Caring is a constitutive aspect of the forms of experience in which infants are embedded in the process of becoming persons. Infants are immersed in a world of mutual responsiveness within caring relationships that are infused with concern, interest, and enjoyment. In such a developmental system, infants become persons when they are treated as persons.

Can A Funny Story about Tooth Brushing Decrease Plaque Scores in Children? A Longitudinal Field Experiment

Dental caries is the most common chronic condition among children, it is thus a necessity to develop health communication tools to increase children's dental hygiene. Prior research among adults indicates that entertaining narrative communication can promote health behaviors, but knowledge on narrative effects on children's health outcomes is limited. In a repeated measures field experiment (N = 94, 4-10 years) we examined the long-term effects of repeated exposure to a humorous tooth brushing narrative about an orange monkey, versus an expository text on dental care, on children's self-reported and biomedical dental hygiene (plaque scores). We also explored narrative, affective and cognitive processes. Findings showed that the humorous narrative increased character engagement, enjoyment, and moral judgment compared with the expository condition. Enjoyment and moral judgment, in turn, predicted increases and decreases in plaque scores, respectively. We conclude that effectiveness of humorous narrative approach crucially depends on whether the child understands it when a story character is violating the rule.

Facilitating the prosocial development of Rohingya refugee children

Prosociality is essential for the success of human societies. Children's prosocial development is found to increase in contexts that foster collaboration or emotion perspective taking and is negatively affected by exposure to extreme psychosocial trauma and adversity. Based on these findings, we assessed the effect of collaboration and emotion perspective taking on three types of prosocial behavior-helping, sharing, and comforting-in Rohingya children living in a refugee settlement in India (N = 122; age range = 4-11 years). Half of the children were born in Myanmar (i.e., experienced forced migration from genocide), and half were born in the refugee settlement after their families left Myanmar. We also included a small sample of Rohingya Canadian children (N = 20; age range = 3-12 years) as a within-culture comparison of overall levels of prosocial responding, which were higher in this group relative to children in a refugee settlement. We assigned children in the refugee settlement to one of three conditions-Collaboration, Emotion Perspective Taking (intervention conditions), or Drawing (control condition)-and assessed the three types of prosocial responding following the intervention. Prosocial responding was highest after Collaboration for children born in the refugee settlement and was highest after Emotion Perspective Taking for children born in Myanmar. Overall, these findings point to the potential prosocial benefit in refugee contexts for intervention programs that are responsive to children's lived experience.

Material and relational asymmetry: The role of receivers' wealth and power status in children's resource allocation

Asymmetries in social status, specifically social status related to wealth and relational power, appear to influence the ways in which children allocate resources. However, the impact of wealth and relational power status on children's resource allocation decisions has yet to be examined among children developing within a Chinese cultural context. In addition, how children weight the relative importance of these factors when they exist concurrently is not well understood. In Study 1, we examined the impact of recipients' wealth and relational power status on Chinese children's (3- to 8-year-olds; N = 199) allocation decisions. We found that across both categories of social status, 3- and 4-year-olds gave more to high-status individuals, whereas 7- and 8-year-olds gave more to low-status individuals, despite younger children also showing a strong egalitarian preference when the resources could be allocated equally. In Study 2, we investigated how children (3- to 8-year-olds; N = 219) weigh the relative importance of these two types of social status in situations where the level of recipients' wealth and relational power were either consistent or in conflict. When they needed to allocate the resources unequally, the youngest children were found to place greater emphasis on wealth over relational power and favored the high-status individual, whereas older children tended to favor the low-status individual and placed greater importance on relational power over wealth. Overall, we found a consistent age-related shift from favoring high-status individuals toward compensating low-status individuals, suggesting a developing concern for social equity.

Perspective taking as a mechanism for children's developing preferences for equitable distributions

How do young children develop a concept of equity? Infants prefer dividing resources equally and expect others to make such distributions. Between the ages of 3–8, children begin to exhibit preferences to avoid inequitable outcomes in their distributions, dividing resources unequally if the result of that distribution is a more equitable outcome. Four studies investigated children’s developing preferences for generating equitable distributions, focusing on the mechanisms for this development. Children were presented with two characters with different amount of resources, and then a third character who will distribute more resources to them. Three- to 8-year-olds were asked whether the third character should give an equal number of resources to the recipients, preserving the inequity, or an unequal number to them, creating an equitable outcome. Starting at age 7, children showed a preference for equitable distributions (Study 1, N = 144). Studies 2a (N = 72) and 2b (N = 48) suggest that this development is independent of children’s numerical competence. When asked to take the perspective of the recipient with fewer resources, 3- to 6-year-olds were more likely to make an equitable distribution (Study 3, N = 122). These data suggest that social perspective taking underlies children’s prosocial actions, and supports the hypothesis that their spontaneous capacity to take others’ perspectives develops during the early elementary-school years.

Altruistic self-regulation in young children

We investigated whether children would be willing to sustain delaying their own gratification in order to benefit someone else. We used a modified version of the classic "marshmallow task," in which children must sustain delaying gratification in the presence of the immediate reward for an unspecified amount of time in order to receive a larger reward later. Children were assigned to one of three conditions. In the Self condition, children were given a food item and were told that if they waited to eat it, they would receive a second food item. In the Prosocial condition, children also were given a food item but were told that if they waited to eat their food item, another child would get a food item. In the Nonsocial Control condition, children were given a food item but were told that waiting to eat it would not benefit anyone. We found that children waited significantly longer in both the Self and Prosocial conditions than in the Nonsocial Control condition, and children's wait durations in the Self and Prosocial conditions were not significantly different. Our results suggest that children are willing to engage in effortful self-regulation in order to benefit another child.

Majority group children expect that ethnic out-group peers feel fewer positive but more negative emotions than in-group peers

Across two studies majority group children's (8-13 years) perception of positive and negative emotions in ethnic in-group and disadvantaged ethnic out-group peers was examined. Study 1 (N = 302) showed that children expected in-group peers to feel better in a positive situation compared to out-group peers. Whereas, in a negative situation, children expected in-group peers to feel less bad compared to out-group peers, particularly when they evaluated the in-group as very positive. Study 2 (N = 201) replicates these findings across multiple positive and negative situations, and additionally shows that in very negative situations children expect in-group and out-group peers to feel equally bad. These results suggest that children's perception of emotions in others is influenced by ethnic group membership.

Preschoolers consider (absent) others when choosing a distribution procedure

This study investigated how the presence of others and anticipated distributions for self influence children’s fairness-related decisions in two different socio-moral contexts. In the first part, three- and five-year-old children (N = 120) decided between a fair and an unfair wheel of fortune to allocate resources (procedural justice). In the second part, they directly chose between two distributions of resources (distributive justice). While making a decision, each child was either observed by the affected group members (public), alone (private), or no others were introduced (non-social control). Children choose the fair option more often when others were affected (independently of their presence) only in the procedural justice task. These results suggest that using a fair procedure to distribute resources allows young preschoolers to overcome selfish tendencies.

Increased sharing between collaborators extends beyond the spoils of collaboration

Research has shown that preschoolers increase equal sharing after collaborating to earn resources, suggesting that collaboration may be an important context for the development of fairness. The current study explored the influence of specific components of collaborative interactions to better understand the social cognitive foundations of this precocious increase in equal sharing. The effects of three forms of collaborative interaction on children's sharing were compared: collaborating toward a joint concrete goal of earning resources that could subsequently be shared, collaborating toward a joint concrete goal without earning resources, and playing a social game without earning resources. Replicating previous work, a significant increase in the proportion of equal sharing was observed when children shared collaboratively earned resources. Extending these findings, collaboration toward a concrete goal resulted in increased sharing regardless of whether resources were earned collaboratively or given outside of the collaborative context. Social play alone was not found to influence children's sharing, highlighting the importance of the context of collaboration toward a concrete goal to increase children's sharing. Overall, these findings suggest that collaborating toward a shared concrete goal fosters a general increase in prosociality that extends beyond the context of sharing collaboratively earned resources.

Fairness, prosociality, hypocrisy, and happiness: Children's and adolescents' motives for showing unselfish behaviour and positive emotions

The present study examined what motives account for age-related decreases in selfish behaviour and whether these motives equally predict positive emotions when making a moral decision. The study was based on a sample of 190 children and adolescents (101 females) from three different age groups (childhood, early adolescence, and middle adolescence, M = 12.9 years, SD = 2.58). A decision-making task was used where participants chose between (1) maximizing their own self-interest versus (2) being prosocial, (3) being fair, or (4) appearing fair while avoiding the costs of actually being fair. Overall, prosociality and fairness were equally important motives for unselfish behaviour. At the same time, the importance of fairness motivation increased with age. Hypocrisy motivation was less frequent than expected by chance. Prosociality was most strongly and positively associated with self-rated happiness about the decision, whereas the opposite was found for individuals who were motivated by fairness. Overall, the study indicates that children's or adolescents' unselfish behaviour in decision-making tasks are driven by a variety of motives with diverse emotional implications. The relative importance of these motives changes over the course of development. STATEMENT OF CONTRIBUTION: What is already known on this subject? Older children behave less selfishly in resource allocation tasks. Prosocial behaviour is associated with positive emotions. What the present study adds? Unselfish behaviour is equally motivated by fairness and prosociality. Fairness motivation increases from childhood throughout adolescence. Decisions motivated by prosociality are experienced as more positive than decisions motivated by fairness.

Moral stories emphasizing actors' negative emotions toward their nonhelping behavior promote preschoolers' helping behavior

Specific emotions, especially guilt, are considered to facilitate children's prosocial behavior. The current study differentiated moral stories with a helping theme in terms of the valence and source of emotions and aimed to clarify the effect of these stories on preschoolers' helping intentions and behavior. A total of 322 preschoolers between 4 and 6 years old were randomly assigned to four experimental groups and one control group. A specific type of moral story was presented to each of the experimental groups, whereas a nonmoral story was presented to the control group. The preschoolers were also asked to answer relevant questions to examine their story comprehension. The preschoolers' donating intentions and behavior were then measured. The results showed that all the experimental groups expressed more donating intentions than the control group. However, only the group that read the moral story emphasizing the actor's negative emotions toward his nonhelping behavior displayed more donating behavior than the control group. Therefore, the current study reveals that various moral stories dealing with a helping theme can facilitate helping intentions among preschoolers and that only certain stories can promote their helping behavior. Thus, it indicates the specificity of moral stories that facilitate prosocial behavior in terms of the valence and source of emotions in those stories.

Preschoolers' social experiences and empathy-based responding relate to their fair resource allocation

Although the development of fairness has become a topic of wide interest, little is known about the correlates and factors that relate to the early ontogeny of fairness-related decision making in preschoolers. The current study assessed 5-year-old children's consideration of existing inequalities in their resource allocation decisions, that is, their tendency to allocate more resources to poor others than to rich others. In addition, children's prosocial responding toward others in pain, the amount of their social interaction experiences, and their social-cognitive abilities were assessed. The results provide evidence that children's early social interaction experiences and empathy-based prosocial responding relate to their fairness-related decision making, supporting a relational systems approach to early prosocial and moral development.