Being Sticker Rich: Numerical Context Influences Children's Sharing Behavior

Fair sharing is just caring: Links between justice sensitivity and distributive behavior in middle childhood

Justice sensitivity (JS), the tendency to perceive and adversely respond to injustice, was related to prosocial behavior in different age groups and to distributive preferences in adults. To test influences of JS on sharing and distributive preferences, middle childhood as an important phase for moral development may be particularly interesting. We asked 1320 5- to 12-year-old children (M = 8.05 years, SD = 1.02; 51.2 % girls, 1.3 % transgender and gender-nonconforming) to read five vignettes that made salient the different principles of distributive justice (equality, merit, and need) and to distribute imaginary sweets between themselves and one described child (sharing) or between two described children (distributing). Children also rated their JS, and parents rated children's theory of mind (ToM) abilities and empathy. More concerns for justice for the self (victim JS) predicted distributions following the merit principle and a preference for need over equality and merit when forced to choose among the three. Caring for justice for others (altruistic JS) predicted more sharing, equal distributions, less distributions according to the merit principle, and a preference for equal distributions over merit and need when forced to choose among the three. These associations prevailed when ToM and empathy were included as control variables. The findings underline the importance of justice-related personality traits, such as JS, for moral development in middle childhood.

Attachment and prosocial behavior in middle childhood: The role of emotion regulation

There is a lack of research on the development of prosocial behavior in middle childhood. The current study addressed this gap through the application of attachment theory; attachment security has been shown to promote prosocial behavior in early childhood, and emotion regulation may be an important intervening variable in this association. A sample of 199 children (aged 6-12 years) reported on their attachment internal working models for the mother-child and father-child relationships, parents reported on child emotion regulation and emotional lability/dysregulation, and children completed a sticker donation task to assess their prosocial behavior. Child emotional lability/dysregulation served as an intervening variable in the association between father-child attachment security (communication and trust) and greater sticker donation. Mother-child and father-child attachment security was also associated with child emotion regulation, but emotion regulation was not associated with sticker donation. Findings suggest that secure attachment may foster prosocial behavior toward peers in middle childhood primarily by reducing dysregulated responses to the distress of others.

Slingshot Challenge and Star Mines: Two digital games as a prisoner's dilemma to assess cooperation in children

The prisoner's dilemma (PD) has been widely adopted by researchers to investigate cooperation among adults and children. However, studies using the PD with children are not as extensive as experiments with adults. The main aim of this work was to introduce and show the feasibility and validity of two digital games with the structural features of a PD (Slingshot Challenge [SC] and Star Mines [SM]) to investigate children's cooperative behavior. In two experiments, 162 children aged 6 to 12 years played SC and SM in different conditions. It was observed that children understood the dynamics of a PD, and were highly motivated to play SC and SM. We found that participants were more cooperative playing SM than SC and cooperated conditionally as well. We also found that sex and first-trial cooperation were associated with higher levels of cooperation. The results support the utility of SC and SM as feasible, reliable, and valid instruments for assessing cooperative behavior in childhood.

Happy Little Benefactor: Prosocial Behaviors Promote Happiness in Young Children From Two Cultures

Evidence that young children display more happiness when sharing than receiving treats supports that humans, by nature, are prosocial. However, whether this "warm glow" is also found for other prosocial behaviors (instrumental helping and empathic helping) and/or in different cultures is still unclear. Dutch (studies 1 and 2) and Chinese (study 3) young children participated in a sharing task, followed by instrumental helping and empathic helping tasks in which they were praised (thanked) if they helped. Consistent results were found across three studies, showing that (1) participants displayed more happiness after giving than receiving treats; (2) toddlers displayed more happiness after instrumental helping than initially interacting with the experimenter; and (3) toddlers' happiness remained the same after positive social feedback (i.e., being thanked). Taken together, these results indicate that independent of culture, both sharing and instrumental helping are emotionally rewarding, supporting an evolutionary origin of these behaviors.

Explaining early moral hypocrisy: Numerical cognition promotes equal sharing behavior in preschool-aged children

Recent work has documented that despite preschool-aged children's understanding of social norms surrounding sharing, they fail to share their resources equally in many contexts. Here we explored two hypotheses for this failure: an insufficient motivation hypothesis and an insufficient cognitive resources hypothesis. With respect to the latter, we specifically explored whether children's numerical cognition-their understanding of the cardinal principle-might underpin their abilities to share equally. In Experiment 1, preschoolers' numerical cognition fully mediated age-related changes in children's fair sharing. We found little support for the insufficient motivation hypothesis-children stated that they had shared fairly, and failures in sharing fairly were a reflection of their number knowledge. Numerical cognition did not relate to children's knowledge of the norms of equality (Experiment 2). Results suggest that the knowledge-behavior gap in fairness may be partly explained by the differences in cognitive skills required for conceptual and behavioral equality.

Developmental Differences in Infants' Fairness Expectations From 6 to 15 Months of Age

The present research investigated the developmental trajectory of infants' fairness expectations from 6 to 15 months of age (N = 150). Findings revealed a developmental transition in infants' fairness expectations between 6 and 12 months, as indicated by enhanced visual attention to unfair outcomes of resource distribution events (a 3:1 distribution) relative to fair outcomes (a 2:2 distribution). The onset of naturalistic sharing behavior predicted infants' fairness expectations at transitional ages. Beyond this period of developmental transition, the presence of siblings and infants' prompted giving behavior predicted individual differences in infants' fairness concerns. These results provide evidence for the role of experience in the acquisition of fairness expectations and reveal early individual differences in such expectations.

"Wealth Makes Many Friends": Children Expect More Giving From Resource-Rich Than Resource-Poor Individuals

Young children show social preferences for resource-rich individuals, although few studies have explored the causes underlying such preferences. We evaluate the viability of one candidate cause: Children believe that resource wealth relates to behavior, such that they expect the resource rich to be more likely to materially benefit others (including themselves) than the resource poor. In Studies 1 and 2 (ages 4-10), American children from predominantly middle-income families (n = 94) and Indian children from lower income families (n = 30) predicted that the resource rich would be likelier to share with others than the resource poor. In Study 3, American children (n = 66) made similar predictions in an incentivized decision-making task. The possibility that children's expectations regarding giving contribute to prowealth preferences is discussed.