Leaving a Choice for Others: Children’s Evaluations of Considerate, Socially-Mindful Actions

Abstract

People value those who act with others in mind even as they pursue their own goals. Across three studies (N=566; 4- to 6-year-olds), we investigated children’s developing understanding of such considerate, socially-mindful actions. By age 6, both U.S. and Chinese children positively evaluate a character who takes a snack for herself in a way that leaves snack choice for others over a character who leaves no choice (Study 1), but only when the actors had alternative possible actions (Study 2) and when a clear beneficiary was present (Study 3). These results suggest an emerging ability to infer underlying social intentions from self-oriented actions, providing insights into the role of social-cognitive capacities vs. culture-specific norms in children’s moral evaluations.

Full text

Running Head: EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
** Accepted for publication in Child Development
Leaving a Choice for Others: Children’s Evaluations of Considerate, Socially-Mindful
Actions
Xin Zhao1, Xuan Zhao2, Hyowon Gweon3, Tamar Kushnir4
1Department of Educational Psychology, East China Normal University
2Booth School of Business, University of Chicago
3Department of Psychology, Stanford University
4Department of Human Development, Cornell University
Author Note
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Xin Zhao, Department of
Educational Psychology, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.; email:
xz437@cornell.edu.
Open Science Practice
All study materials, data and pre-registration information have been made publicly
available via the Open Science Framework and can be accessed at http://tiny.cc/tbw9pz.

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Leaving a Choice for Others: Children’s Evaluations of Considerate, Socially-Mindful
Actions
Abstract
People value those who act with others in mind even as they pursue their own goals.
Across three studies (N=566; 4- to 6-year-olds), we investigated children’s developing
understanding of such considerate, socially-mindful actions. By age 6, both U.S. and Chinese
children positively evaluate a character who takes a snack for herself in a way that leaves snack
choice for others over a character who leaves no choice (Study 1), but only when the actors had
alternative possible actions (Study 2) and when a clear beneficiary was present (Study 3). These
results suggest an emerging ability to infer underlying social intentions from self-oriented
actions, providing insights into the role of social-cognitive capacities vs. culture-specific norms
in children’s moral evaluations.
Keywords: social mindfulness, social evaluation, social cognitive development, moral cognition,
prosocial behavior

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3
Human societies value prosocial actions that forgo one’s own interests in the service of
others. History remembers those who sacrificed themselves for others, and media highlights
those who make selfless donations or put themselves at risk to save people. As individuals, we
routinely praise those who act to benefit others.
A large body of research on early prosocial behaviors has focused on prosocial actions
that are directly intended to benefit recipients, such as helping, sharing, or teaching (Tomasello,
2009; Warneken & Tomasello, 2006; Chernyak & Kushnir, 2013; Liszkowski, Carpenter, &
Tomasello, 2008; Bridgers, Jara-Ettinger, & Gweon, 2020; Svetlova, Nichols, & Brownell, 2010;
Dahl, 2015; Dunfield, Kuhlmeier, O’Connell, & Kelley, 2011). Such actions usually involve
purposeful transfer of physical aid, resources, or information intended to create direct, positive
consequences for the recipient. Evaluations of such prosocial actions have also been shown to
emerge early in life. For example, even infants favor someone who helps another person fulfill a
goal over someone who hinders another person from goal completion (e.g., Hamlin et al., 2007,
Van de Vondervoort & Hamlin, 2017) and favor someone who shares with others over someone
who does not (e.g., Burns & Sommerville, 2014).
Yet, not all prosocial actions manifest as personal sacrifices that prioritize others over the
self (Batson & Shaw, 1991). Our focus in this paper is on indirect prosocial acts: those that
intentionally create good outcomes for another person as byproduct of a self-oriented action. In
particular, we focus here on one type of indirect prosociality: actions that simultaneously benefit
the self and are considerate of another’s freedom of choice. By way of example, consider a
seemingly mundane scene at a reception event, where a young woman (call her Jenny) is waiting
in line to get a dessert. When it is her turn to choose, there are only two fruit tarts and one
chocolate mousse left, with one person waiting in line behind her. In this example, Jenny’s action

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would fulfill the self-oriented desire to have a dessert. However, her decision would also create a
foreseeable effect on the person behind her; depending on which dessert she chooses, the person
behind her would either have only one option (tarts) or two (tart vs mousse). Unless Jenny knows
what the next person likes or has a clear preference herself, taking a fruit tart and thereby leaving
a choice for the next person seems more considerate. In prior work, this act of “being thoughtful
of others in the present moment, and considering their needs and wishes before making a
decision” has been termed social mindfulness (Van Lange & Van Doesum, 2015).
Unlike direct prosociality, the impact of social mindfulness is indirect in nature. As
illustrated in the dessert scenario above, such actions are primarily intended to achieve the
actor’s own goal. However, these actions can also have positive or negative downstream
consequences for others; in such contexts, by intentionally deciding to act in a way that provides
another person with options, the agent can convey an indirect yet meaningful prosocial intention
(Van Doesum, Van Langue, & Van Lange, 2013). These considerate, socially-mindful actions
can be taken even when the beneficiary’s goals or preferences are unknown or ambiguous; the
actor can consider the hypothetical impact of her own actions under different scenarios (e.g.,
what if the next person prefers the chocolate mousse, or prefers the fruit tart?) and try to act in
ways that benefit others or avoid unnecessary harm.
Given that a large portion of human actions we observe in our daily life involve
balancing our own needs and desires with the needs and desires of others, the ability to evaluate
actions in light of their indirect impact on others is critically important. However, despite
abundant research on children’s social and moral evaluations, little is known about whether
young children evaluate actions based on indirect social consequences, and how these
evaluations change across ages and across cultures. The current study investigates the mentalistic

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5
nature, developmental trajectory, and cultural dependency of the capacity to recognize and infer
indirect prosocial intent from another person’s self-oriented actions among 4- to 6-year-olds in
the U.S. and China.
In what follows, we briefly review prior work on adults’ social evaluation of socially-
mindful actions and discuss why these evaluations might be challenging for young children. We
then motivate our developmental hypothesis by reviewing recent work that suggests that by early
school years, children may already have the requisite cognitive abilities for making these
evaluations. Finally, we discuss the value of studying populations across two cultures—U.S. and
China—that differ in their cultural values in individual choice and concerns for others.
Recent research provides initial evidence that adults appreciate social mindfulness (Van
Doesum et al., 2013). In their original study on social mindfulness in adults, Van Doesum et al.
(2013) used a simple paradigm where two players took turns to select one of three items (e.g.,
two green hats and one yellow hat). They found that adults not only act in ways that leave a
choice for others, but also favor those who act in ways that leave others with a choice, both as
beneficiaries of these actions and as third-party observers. These studies provide initial
demonstration that adults understand and evaluate self-oriented actions with indirect prosocial
intent.
Van Doesum and colleagues (2013) raise the possibility that prosocial (empathic)
concerns and perspective taking (theory of mind) are foundations for such intuitions. While these
qualities emerge relatively early in childhood, the indirectness of socially-mindful actions can
make them rather challenging for young children to recognize and evaluate. Consider the
example of Jenny’s action of taking one of the two fruit tarts. To see why Jenny’s action of
taking one of two fruit tarts is prosocial, children must understand not only that this action allows

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6
the next person to choose whichever one she likes, but also that such choice wouldn’t be
available if Jenny takes the only chocolate mousse. In other words, children must understand
what else Jenny could have done, compare the consequences for the next person under two
possible scenarios, and recognize that only one of these actions maximizes the next person’s
ability to fulfil her own personal desires (her “expected utility” e.g. Jara-Ettinger, Gweon, Schulz
& Tenenbaum, 2016) by enabling a free choice.
Importantly, such inferences are licensed only in contexts where Jenny’s action signals a
social intention. Suppose that Jenny sees either three different varieties of desserts or three
identical desserts left on the table. In the first scenario, any action she performs will always leave
two varieties. In the second scenario, no action she performs will do so. Either way, the
availability of alternative possible actions, and constraints on possible actions, are attributed to
the situation rather than Jenny’s intention; her action is thus uninformative with respect to
whether she intended to be considerate, and may not be deemed as praiseworthy.
Given these challenges, one may expect that children cannot make such sophisticated
evaluation until quite late in development. However, there are reasons to believe that the
prerequisite inferential and evaluative capacities for such understanding are present in early
childhood. First, even infants can infer others’ intentions and preferences from their choices
(Repacholi & Gopnik, 1997; Phillips & Wellman, 2005; Woodward, 2009); some studies suggest
that these inferences are made in light of alternative actions that are available to the actor in the
context (Gergely, Bekkering, & Kiraly, 2002; Kushnir, Xu, & Wellman, 2010; Kushnir, 2018;
Pesowski, Denison, & Friedman, 2016). Toddlers and preschoolers are more likely to interpret
an agent’s choice as an indicator of her underlying preferences when the agent foregoes more
probable alternative options and chooses a less probable option instead (Kushnir et al., 2010; see

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7
also Gweon, Tenenbaum, & Schulz, 2010 for a similar sensitivity, but about inferring object
properties). Furthermore, the ability to simultaneously represent multiple possibilities seems to
be in place by 4 years of age (Leahy & Carey, 2020). Such reasoning becomes more explicit by
late preschool years; children readily evaluate their own and other people’s helpfulness
depending on the available alternative actions the actor could have taken (Gweon & Asaba,
2018; Chernyak & Kushnir, 2013; 2018).
Second, recent work suggests that children reason about the expected rewards and costs
of others’ actions and expect others to act in ways that maximize expected utilities (Jara-Ettinger,
et al, 2016; Liu, Ullman, Tenenbaum, & Spelke, 2017). By late preschool years, children readily
consider their own and others’ expected utilities in their own prosocial decisions (Bridgers, Jara-
Ettinger, & Gweon, 2020; Liu, Gonzalez, & Warneken, 2018). For example, Bridgers et al.
(2020) shows that when children are asked to choose what to teach for a naïve learner, they
consider the potential consequences of their decision to the learner’s utilities and choose to teach
what would be more rewarding and more costly for the learner to learn.
Finally, by late preschool years, children consistently consider the intention behind an
action in addition to the outcome (e.g., attempted or innocent harm; see Cushman, Sheketoff,
Wharton, & Carey, 2013). Prior work also suggests a link between the development of intent-
based social evaluation and development of theory of mind abilities (Killen et al., 2011; Smetana
et al., 2012) in preschool years.
These prior studies raise the possibility that children, by late preschool or early school
years, have the key prerequisite abilities for appreciating social mindfulness; they already
possess a sophisticated understanding of others’ minds, including their expected rewards and the
intentions behind actions, as well as the ability to selectively attribute intentionality to actions by

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8
considering available alternatives. These abilities are also consistent with a recent study showing
that children prefer varied set of items over a set of identical items both for themselves and for
others (Echelbarger & Gelman, 2017). However, whether children can use these abilities to
evaluate considerate, socially-mindful actions that are primarily self-oriented (rather than
prosocial actions that are clearly other-oriented) still remains an open question.
It is possible that evaluation of considerate actions depends primarily on these social-
cognitive capacities. However, as children’s inferential and theory of mind abilities develop in
early childhood, their sensitivity to norms and learning of norms also develop (e.g., Rakoczy &
Schmidt, 2013). Thus, to understand how the ability to evaluate considerate, socially-mindful
actions develops over childhood, it is important to ask the degree to which such ability is
modulated by cultural learning of the particular norms or values in children’s social
environments. Prior research with adults suggests that people growing up in the U.S. and East
Asia differ in the relative importance they place on individuality versus interdependence and in
concerns about being considerate of others (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Yamagishi, Hashimoto,
& Schug, 2008). A particularly relevant set of studies asked adults to choose one item from four
items of the same kind and one unique item, and found that East Asian adults are more likely to
take one of the four common items than U.S. adults (Kim & Markus, 1999; Yamagishi et al.,
2008). This has been interpreted as evidence that East Asian cultures place stronger emphasis
than Western cultures on concerns about others’ needs (Yamagishi et al., 2008). Such emphasis
on concerns for others is also reflected in parents’ socialization goals and strategies (e.g., Keller,
2012): While parents in the U.S. tend to emphasize individual needs, desires and aspirations,
parents in East Asian cultures tend to emphasize the development of relatedness, social
responsibilities and concerns for others (e.g., Wang, 2006). Despite these cultural differences,

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9
however, many aspects of children’s social-cognitive abilities and their developmental
trajectories—especially those regarding understanding others’ preferences and intentions—seem
relatively immune to cultural differences (though there are smaller variations in exact age and
ordering of questions, see Liu, Wellman, Tardif, & Sabbagh, 2008; Wellman, Fang, Liu, Zhu, &
Liu, 2006). Thus, examining the developmental trajectory in both U.S. and Chinese populations
might offer valuable insights into the degree to which culture might influence children’s
judgments. If children’s ability to infer social mindfulness is significantly influenced by cultural
learning of particular norms or values in children’s social environments, then we may see earlier
development in cultures where relatedness and considerateness is more explicitly emphasized; if
these evaluations are primarily supported by early-emerging social-cognitive capacities rather
than shaped mainly by cultural input, then we may see similar developmental timetables in both
cultures.
In the current studies, we investigate whether children understand and favorably evaluate
intentional acts with indirect social consequences (i.e. “social mindfulness”). Although we
recognize that social mindfulness is a broad concept and can have numerous manifestations, here
we adapt the paradigm of Van Doesum and colleagues (2013) to focus on actions that
intentionally leave a choice for others as a useful starting point. This allows us to systematically
manipulate the intentions of the agent and the potential consequence for the next person, and also
compare our findings with prior work with adults (Van Doesum et al., 2013).
In Study 1, we ask children to compare two characters who take the same item but one
leaves a choice while the other does not, which allows us to examine whether, and at what age,
children can evaluate actors’ self-oriented actions based on the options left for others even when
the actions are identical. In Study 2, we investigate whether such evaluation reflects a genuine

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10
understanding of the actor’s social intention. Specifically, we ask children to compare two
characters who cause the same outcome (both leave a choice or both leave no choice),
contrasting a scenario in which the agent could have done otherwise (could have been less or
more considerate) with a scenario in which the agent was constrained by the situation to act as
(s)he did (would have left a choice/not left a choice for the beneficiary no matter what). Thus, we
investigate whether children’s evaluations consider the agents’ freedom to choose the
considerate action. Finally, an important prerequisite for inferring prosocial intention behind an
action is the presence of a beneficiary. If nobody was waiting behind Jenny, we would infer that
her action does not involve a social intention. Thus, in Study 3, we investigate whether children
make favorable evaluations only when there was beneficiary waiting behind but not when there
was no obvious beneficiary of the action.
Given the development of evaluating helpfulness based on expected rewards for others
(e.g. Bridgers et al., 2020) and intent-based social evaluations in late preschool years (e.g.,
Cushman et al., 2013), we tested children between ages 4 and 6. We also tested a group of adults
and used their evaluations as a frame of reference for interpreting developmental data. We
examine children from both the U.S. and China to examine the role of social-cognitive capacities
vs. culture-specific social norms in children’s understanding of considerate, socially mindful
actions.
Study 1
Method
Participants. Informed by developmental studies on comparable topics (e.g., Van de
Vondervoort & Hamlin, 2017; Olson & Spelke, 2008), we set our sample size at 24 for each age
group. Seventy-two 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds from the U.S. (4.01 – 6.98 years old, M = 5.51, SD

EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
11
= .85; 24 per age group, 58% girls) and 72 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds from China (4.13 – 6.96 years
old, M = 5.45, SD = .74; 24 per age group, 53% girls) were included in our final analyses. U.S.
children were recruited from preschools, afterschool programs, or museums in a small university
town. U.S. children predominantly came from White middle- to high-SES families and spoke
English as native language. Chinese participants were recruited from preschools and after-school
programs in Beijing, China. They predominantly came from middle- to high-SES families, spoke
Chinese as native language and were of the Han ethnicity. Eight additional children participated
but were replaced because of a missing recording file (N = 1 in the U.S., N = 3 in China),
voluntarily quitting the study (N = 3 in China) or providing incorrect answers on the attention
check questions (N = 1 in China, see below).
For the adult comparison groups, we conducted a priori power analysis (with an effect
size of w = 0.5 based on pilot test results, an alpha level of 0.05, a power of 0.80) and set our
sample size as 32 per culture. Thus, 34 U.S. residents (M age = 32.32, SD age = 9.64; 62% male,
38% female) were recruited online through Amazon Mechanical Turk and 37 (M age = 28.75,
SD age = 11.28; 35% male, 59% female, 6% other or unreported) Chinese residents were
recruited online through social media. The procedures and the analysis plan for the adult study
were pre-registered on AsPredicted.
Materials. Child participants were shown three dolls and two boxes with plastic fruits
(apples and bananas). Adult participants were presented with cartoon illustrations of the same
scenarios, and the characters all possess minimalistic facial features (i.e., only eyes).
The English protocol for preschoolers was first translated into Mandarin Chinese by a
native Mandarin speaker, and then back-translated into English by another Mandarin-English
bilingual. A native English speaker then compared the back translation with the original English

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12
protocol to check for accuracy, and discrepancies were then revised through group discussions.
The task instructions for adult participants were then developed to closely resemble the English
protocol for children. Three different native Mandarin speakers then translated the instructions
into Chinese and resolved discrepancies in their translations.
Procedure. All child participants were tested individually in a quiet room in local
museums, preschools, or elementary schools. Children in the U.S. were tested in English by a
U.S. experimenter, while children in China were tested in Mandarin by a Chinese experimenter.
We set up our story as about friends at snack times that are familiar and easy to
understand for children of this age range. In the story, the experimenter presented children with
two scenarios in which the protagonist, Sophie, waited in line for a snack. In each scenario, she
was behind one of her friends (Bella or Jenny). Each agent was allowed to choose one snack, and
when it was her friend’s turn to choose, the options consisted of two identical fruits (e.g., two
apples) and one unique fruit (e.g., a banana). One friend chose one of two identical fruits (e.g.,
one apple among two apples and one banana), leaving Sophie with a choice between two
different kinds of fruits (i.e., an apple and a banana). The other friend chose the unique fruit (e.g.,
the apple among one apple and two bananas), leaving Sophie with two fruits of one kind (e.g.,
two bananas). See Figure 1 for an example of the story setup. The friend (Bella or Jenny) in each
scenario and the type of choice left by the friends were counterbalanced across participants. The
full protocol can be accessed at http://tiny.cc/tbw9pz.
After being presented with both scenarios, the experimenter asked four attention check
questions to ensure that children had paid attention to and understood the story. The questions
were about what fruit each friend chose (i.e., “What did Bella or Jenny choose?”) and which
fruits each friend left for Sophie (i.e., “What did Bella or Jenny leave for Sophie to choose

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13
from?”). If the children answered any of the four questions incorrectly, the experimenter would
repeat the story and then ask the same question again. If they answered incorrectly a second time,
their data were excluded from analysis (N = 1 in China). After that, the experimenter asked the
main question: “Who do you think is a nicer friend to Sophie?” After they provided an answer,
the experimenter asked “Why?” to prompt an explanation. After the main question, the
experimenter also asked: “If you are going to choose one from Bella and Jenny to play with, who
would you prefer to play with?” We included this question as an exploratory measure to examine
whether children’s social affiliation preference is influenced by their social evaluation. Given the
potential influence of repeated questioning (Bonawitz, Shafto, Yu, Gonzalez, & Bridgers, 2020),
we report the results in Supporting Information.
Adult participants read identical scenarios on Qualtrics and answered identical social
judgment questions except that they were not asked the attention check questions before the
dependent measures and were not requested to explain their forced-choice responses. The full
protocol can be accessed at http://tiny.cc/tbw9pz.
Coding. Children’s explanatory responses were coded as either referring to the concept
of “leaving a choice for others” or not. For example, if a child mentioned “She left a choice” or
“She left an apple and a banana” or “She left two kinds of fruits” in their explanations, then the
explanation was coded as referring to the concept of “leaving a choice for others.” The first
author coded all of the explanations in both cultures. Two research assistants blind to the
conditions, one a native English speaker and one a native Mandarin speaker, coded the
explanations provided by the U.S. and Chinese children, respectively. The inter-coder
reliabilities between the primary and secondary coders were 97.2% (for U.S. children) and
98.6% (for Chinese children).

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14
Results
First, we examined whether participants chose the friend who left a choice for Sophie as
the “nicer” friend. We first looked at adults’ responses. As expected, adults in both cultures
showed a robust tendency to choose the friend who left a choice for Sophie as nicer (U.S.: 97%,
Binomial sign test, p < .001, g = .47, 95% CI = [84%,100%]; China: 92%, Binomial sign test, p
< .001, g = .42, 95% CI = [78%, 98%]).
We then examined children’s responses using a binary logistic regression, with friend
choice (1= the friend who left a choice, 0 = the friend who left no choice) as the dependent
variable and age (continuous), gender, culture and presentation order as predictors. We found a
significant effect of age (Wald
c
2(1, N = 144) = 7.68, p = .006), but not culture (p = .90); no
other effects were significant (p’s > .51). Given the overall effect of age, we then examined
children’s responses separately in each age group. See Figure 2 for results. Four-year-olds’ and
5-year-olds’ responses in both cultures were not significantly different from chance (two-tailed
binomial sign tests, p’s > .064). By contrast, a significant majority of 6-year-olds in both cultures
selected the friend who left a choice (U.S.: 79%, two-tailed binomial sign test, p = .007, g = .29,
95% CI = [58%, 93%]; China: 83%, two-tailed binomial test, p = .002, g = .33, 95% CI = [63%,
95%]). Thus, by age 6, both U.S. children and Chinese children judged the friend who left a
choice to be nicer than the friend who left no choice.
We then examined children’s qualitative explanations. In general, children’s
explanations were consistent with their evaluative judgments; children who evaluated the friend
who left choice as “nicer” were also more likely to provide explanations referring to the concept
of “leaving a choice for others”, even after controlling for age (partial correlations, U.S.: r = .33,
p = .004; China: r = .65, p < .001). Children’s qualitative explanations also showed

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15
developmental changes. Overall, 23.6% of the U.S. children and 47.2% of the Chinese children
provided explanations that refer to the concept of “leaving a choice for others” (see Table 1 for
the percentage of explanations that refer to the concept of “leaving a choice for others” split by
age group in each culture). According to a binary logistic regression with children’s explanations
(1= refers to the concept of “leaving a choice for others”, 0 = other explanations) as the
dependent variable and age (continuous), gender, culture and presentation order as predictors, we
found a significant effect of age (Wald
c
2(1, N = 144) = 18.62, p < .001), with older children
providing more explanations referring to the concept of “leaving a choice for others”. We also
found a significant main effect of culture (
c
2(1, N = 144) = 9.82, p = .002), with Chinese
children providing more explanations referring to “leaving a choice for others” than U.S.
children. Follow-up exploratory analyses showed that this cultural difference was mostly driven
by 6-year-olds (U.S. vs. China: 38% vs. 75%,
c
2(1) = 8.57, p = .003). Neither gender nor
presentation order had significant main effects (p’s > .20). We then ran a similar binary logistic
regression using explanation as the dependent variable specifically for those children who
selected the character who left a choice as nicer in the main question, and again found a
significant effect of age (Wald
c
2(1, N = 96) = 12.88, p < .001) and a significant main effect of
culture (
c
2(1, N= 96) = 10.05, p = .002). Also, we report details on other explanations children
provided in Supporting Information.
Study 2
In Study 1, we found that by age 6, children in both cultures evaluate someone who
leaves a choice for another person as “nicer” than someone who does not. A genuine
understanding of considerateness in self-oriented actions also requires an understanding that the
agent’s action is motivated by social intention. In Study 2, we investigated whether children ’s

EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
16
evaluations based on inferences about the agents’ social intentions. We designed two between-
subject conditions, each of which contrasted two friends who left identical outcomes for Sophie.
In the Positive vs. Neutral condition, the Positive friend could have left a less diverse set of
options while the Neutral friend had no alternative actions. In the Negative vs. Neutral condition,
the Negative friend could have left a more diverse set of options while the Neutral friend had no
alternative actions. If children’s evaluations in Study 1 simply reflect a preference for variety,
their evaluations in Study 2 should be at chance. However, if the results reflect genuine
inferences about the agents’ social intentions, they should evaluate the agent that had the
alternative action to be nicer (or less nice) than the agent who had no alternative action.
Method
Participants. Given that the final outcomes were identical between the two agents, we
expected a somewhat smaller effect size than Study 1. Thus, we set our sample size as 30 per
condition per each age group. One hundred and eighty 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds from the U.S.
(Positive vs. Neutral condition: 4.08 – 6.97 years old, M = 5.41, SD = .88; 30 per age group, 51%
girls; Negative vs. Neutral condition: 3.97 – 6.98 years old, M = 5.50, SD = .92; 30 per age
group, 47% girls) and 180 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds from the China (Positive vs. Neutral condition:
4.02 – 6.93 years old, M = 5.46, SD = .93; 30 per age group, 55% girls; Negative vs. Neutral
condition: 3.98 – 6.98 years old, M = 5.49, SD = .91; 30 per age group, 51% girls) were included
in our final analyses. Fourteen additional children participated but were replaced because of
experimenter error (N = 4 in China), missing audio files (N = 2 in the U.S., N = 5 in China),
missing date of birth (N = 1 in China), or duplicated testing (N = 2 in the U.S.).
Sixty-seven U.S. adults (M age = 34.60, SD age = 9.57; 55% male, 45% female) and 84
Chinese adults (M age = 30.02, SD age = 11.67; 42% male, 58% female) were recruited online

EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
17
through Amazon Mechanical Turk and social media. The procedures and the analysis plan for
the adult study were pre-registered on AsPredicted.
Materials and procedure. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two between-
subjects conditions (the Positive vs. Neutral condition and the Negative vs. Neutral condition).
The procedures were similar to those in Study 1 except for the comparisons participants made: In
the Positive vs. Neutral condition, children were asked to compare a friend who takes an apple
from two apples and one banana (the Positive Friend) with a friend who takes an orange from
one orange, one banana, and one apple (the Neutral Friend). In the Negative vs. Neutral
condition, children were asked to compare a friend who takes an apple from one apple and two
bananas (the Negative Friend) with a friend who takes a banana from three bananas (the Neutral
Friend). See Figure 3 for examples of the setup.
Coding. We coded for explanations that referred to the available options the friend had
(e.g. “She picked an apple. She knows there are two apples.”) or the fruits the friend left (e.g.
“She left one apple and one banana.”) as appealing to reasons related to leaving a choice for
others. The first author coded all the explanations in both cultures. Two research assistants (a
native English speaker and a native Mandarin speaker) each coded the explanations provided by
U.S. children and Chinese children. The inter-coder reliabilities between the primary coder and
the two other coders were 97.5% (for U.S. children) and 98.1% (for Chinese children).
Results
While Study 1 is a single-condition study, Study 2 features two conditions. Below we
present results in each condition, followed by comparisons across conditions.
The Positive vs. Neutral condition. Figure 4 shows the percentages of participants who
chose the Positive friend (i.e., the friend who took an apple from two apples and one banana)

EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
18
over the Neutral friend when asked, “Who is a nicer friend?” split by age group in each culture.
Adults’ responses revealed a robust tendency to choose the Positive friend as nicer, and this held
true for both the U.S. (88%, Binomial sign test, p < .001, g = .38, 95% CI = [73%, 96%]) and
Chinese adults (92%, Binomial sign test, p < .001, g = .42, 95% CI = [80%, 97%]).
We then examined children’s responses using a binary logistic regression, with friend
choice (1= the Positive friend, 0 = the Neutral friend) as the dependent variable and age
(continuous), gender, culture, and presentation order as predictors. We only found a significant
positive effect of age (Wald
c
2(1, N = 179) = 10.99, p = .001) and no other significant effects
(p’s > .47), including culture (p = .47). Given the overall effect of age, we then examined
children’s choices separately in each age group and culture. Similar to results in Study 1, 4-year-
olds’ and 5-year-olds’ responses in both cultures were not significantly different from chance
(two-tailed binomial sign tests, p’s > .36). By contrast, 6-year-olds in both cultures selected the
Positive friend significantly above chance (U.S. :70%, two-tailed binomial sign test, p = .043, g
= .20, 95% CI = [51%, 85%], China: 73%, two-tailed binomial sign test, p = .016, g = .23, 95%
CI = [54%, 88%]).
Similar to Study 1, controlling for age, those who selected the Positive friend were also
more likely to provide explanations referring to her considerateness (partial correlations, U.S.: r
= .31, p = .003; China: r = .27, p = .011). Children’s qualitative explanations also showed
developmental changes. Overall, 12.2% of the U.S. children and 14.6% of the Chinese children
provided explanations that appealed to the concept of “leaving a choice for others” (see Table 2
for the percentages of children providing explanations that appeal to the concept of “leaving a
choice for others” split by age group in each culture). According to a binary logistic regression
with children’s explanations (1= refers to the concept “leaving a choice for others”, 0 = other

EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
19
explanations) as the dependent variable and age (continuous), gender, culture and presentation
order as predictors, we found a significant positive effect of age (Wald
c
2(1, N = 179) = 17.51, p
< .001), suggesting that older children were more inclined to provide explanations that appeal to
the idea of leaving a choice for others. We did not find any other main effects (all p’s > .15),
including culture (p = .90). We then ran a similar binary logistic regression specifically for those
children who selected the Positive friend as nicer, and again found a significant effect of age
(Wald
c
2(1, N = 99) = 11.76, p = .001) and no other significant effects (p’s > .10).
The Negative vs. Neutral condition. Figure 4 shows the percentages of participants who
chose the Neutral friend (i.e., the friend who took a banana from three bananas) over the
Negative friend when asked “who is a nicer friend” in each age group split by culture. Adults’
responses showed a robust tendency to choose the Neutral friend, and this held true for both U.S.
(79%, Binomial sign test, p < .001, Cohen’s g = .29, 95% CI = [63%, 90%]) and Chinese adults
(81%, Binomial sign test, p < .001, Cohen’s g = .31, 95% CI = [65%, 91%]).
We then examined children’s responses using a binary logistic regression, with friend
choice (1= the Neutral friend, 0 = the Negative friend) as the dependent variable and age
(continuous), gender, culture, and presentation order as predictors. Replicating our findings in
the first condition, we again found a significant positive effect of age (Wald
c
2(1, N = 176) =
6.67, p = .010), but no other significant effects (p’s > .28), including culture (p = .51). Given the
overall effect of age, we then examined children’s responses separately in each age group and
culture. Four-year-olds’ and 5-year-olds’ responses in both cultures were not significantly
different from chance (two-tailed binomial sign test, p’s > .37). Importantly, 6-year-olds in both
cultures selected the Neutral friend above chance (U.S.: 73%, two-tailed binomial sign test, p

EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
20
= .016, g = .23, 95% CI = [54%, 88%]; China: 70%, two-tailed binomial sign test, p = .043, g
= .20, 95% CI = [51%, 85%]).
Controlling for age, those who selected the Neutral friend were also more likely to
provide explanations explicitly refer to leaving a choice (partial correlations, U.S.: r = .40, p <
.001; China: r = .65, p < .001). Children’s qualitative explanations also showed developmental
patterns. Overall, 21.2% of the U.S. children and 23.5% of the Chinese children provided
explanations that appeal to “leaving a choice for others” (see Table 2 for the percentages of
children providing explanations that appeal to the concept of leaving a choice for others). We ran
a binary logistic regression with children’s explanations (1= refers to the concept of “leaving a
choice for others”, 0 = other explanations) as the dependent variable and age (continuous),
gender, culture and presentation order as predictors. We found a significant positive effect of age
(Wald
c
2(1, N = 180) = 18.82, p < .001), with older children providing more explanations
referring to the idea of leaving a choice. No other effect was significant (p’s > .38), including
culture (p = .67). We then ran a similar binary logistic regression specifically for those children
who selected the Neutral Friend as nicer, and again found a significant effect of age (Wald
c
2(1,
N = 99) = 11.76, p = .001) and no other significant effects (p’s > .10).
Comparison between conditions. To explore whether participants’ performance differed
across two conditions (Positive vs. Neutral condition; Neutral vs. Negative condition), we fit
binary logistic regression models (separately for children and adults) with friend choice (1 = the
more positive character, 0 = the less positive character) as the dependent variable and condition,
age (for children only), gender, culture, and presentation order as predictors. Among adults, we
found no effect of condition (p = .081), culture (p = .77), or other factors (p’s > .15). Among
children, we found only a main effect of age (Wald
c
2(1, N = 355) = 17.05, p < .001), but no

EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
21
effect of condition (p = .41), culture (p = .35), or other factors (p’s > .11). The lack of difference
between two conditions among both adult and children participants thus suggests that people
exhibited similar preferences for the more socially-mindful character in each comparison.
Study 3
In Study 2, we found that by age 6, children in both cultures considered whether there
was an alternative action available to the agent who left (or did not leave) a choice, suggesting
that children account for the social intentions of the actor in their evaluations. In Study 3, we
investigated whether children consider the social nature of the action that inferring prosocial
intention behind an action depends on the presence of a beneficiary. We used scenarios identical
to those in Study 1 except for one critical difference: In Study 3, the protagonist was the last in
line, and no beneficiary was behind her.
Method
Participants. Since 4-year-olds in both cultures did not make differentiated evaluations
between the two protagonists in Study 1, we focused on only 5- and 6-year-olds. We determined
our sample size of 30 children per age group per culture based on an a priori power analysis with
an alpha level of .05 and a power of .80, using the effect size of U.S. 5- and 6-year-olds in Study
1 (g = .25). Thirty-two U.S. children (5.10 – 6.92 years old, M = 5.90, SD = .59, 14 girls) and 30
Chinese children (5.10 – 6.99 years old, M = 6.10, SD = .61, 19 girls) were included in the final
analyses. Nine additional children participated but were replaced because of experimenter error
(N = 4 in the U.S., N = 2 in China), lost audio files (N = 1 in the U.S.) and duplicated testing (N
= 2 in the U.S.). The procedures and the analysis plan for this study were pre-registered on
AsPredicted.

EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
22
Materials and Procedure. The procedure was similar to that of Study 1, except that each
scenario featured only one character (either Bella or Jenny) without a second person waiting
behind (i.e., Sophie). Children were presented with two scenarios: in one, the character took an
apple from two apples and one banana; in the other, the character took an apple from one apple
and two bananas. The critical dependent measure was “Who is a nicer friend?”
Results
We first examined children’s responses to “Who is a nicer friend?” We conducted
binomial tests to compare children’s choice to chance level. In both cultures, around half of the
children chose the character that left a choice (U.S.: 50%, China: 48%, two-tailed binomial sign
tests, p’s = 1.00). We also ran Chi-square tests to compare the responses of children in the
current study and those from 5- and 6-year-olds in Study 1. In both cultures, children were more
likely to favor the character who left a choice when there was someone waiting behind them
(Study 1) than when there was nobody waiting behind them (Study 3) (U.S.:
c
2(1, N = 80) =
5.28, p = .022; China:
c
2(1, N = 75) = 3.80, p = .051).
We then examined children’s qualitative explanations and found that very few children
(U.S.: 6.3%, China: 0) provided explanations with reference to the concept of “leaving a choice
for others.” Also, children were more likely to provide explanations that referred to “leaving a
choice for others” in Study 1 than in Study 3 (U.S.:
c
2(1, N = 80) = 7.17, p = .007; China:
c
2(1,
N = 78) = 25.81, p < .001).
These results suggest that the presence of a beneficiary is necessary for children in both
cultures to evaluate the character wo left a choice as nicer; when the self-oriented action incurred
no foreseeable effects on other people, children did not show any systematic preference for any
character.

EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
23
General Discussion
Across three studies, we investigated the mentalistic nature, developmental trajectory,
and cultural dependency of children’s capacity to recognize and evaluate intentional prosociality
from observing an agents’ self-oriented actions with indirect benefits to another agent.
Collectively, our results show that by age 6, children in both the U.S. and China positively
evaluate the socially-mindful, considerate act of leaving choice for others. In Study 1, 6-year-
olds in both cultures evaluated a story character who left a choice as “nicer” than someone who
left no choice. Critically, children in our studies made these evaluations based on an
understanding of both the intention behind the action and the social nature of the action: In Study
2, 6-year-old children, like adults, considered the availability of alternative possible actions in
inferring both positive and negative social intent. In Study 3, children did not make value
judgment when there was no obvious beneficiary.
Across two cultural contexts, we found age-related changes in children’s evaluations of
actions and qualitative explanations. These patterns might reflect developments in their
understanding of the mental causes of action (i.e., desire-based reasoning) as well as the social
consequences of action (i.e., moral evaluation). Together, our findings suggest that by age 6
children understand that one can act prosocially towards others despite being uncertain about
their desires. Furthermore, 6-year-olds use their ability to think about alternative possible actions
and constraints on action (e.g. Study 2) to infer underlying prosocial intent, and their
explanations reveal an emerging ability to appreciate and value socially mindful acts.
What underlies the development that occurs between ages 4 and 6? Prior research allows
us to rule out at least a few possibilities. First, there is a wealth of evidence that even infants
appreciate the value of being directly prosocial (e.g., Hamlin et al., 2007), thus our results do not

EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
24
reflect an inability to evaluate prosociality per se. Second, recent evidence suggests that 4-year-
olds already understand that people prefer possessing two different items to possessing two
identical ones (Echelbarger & Gelman, 2017), thus it is unlikely that younger children in our
study simply failed to appreciate the value of having a choice between two diverse items. Third,
it is also unlikely that 4-year-olds are generally incapable of reasoning about alternative possible
actions and constraints on action (i.e. freedom of choice), as there is evidence that they can do so
appropriately when choices are clearly articulated (Kushnir et al, 2015; Chernyak, Kushnir,
Sullivan, & Wang, 2013; Chernyak, Kang & Kushnir, 2019). Notably, what distinguishes our
study from this prior work is that the actions themselves were self-oriented, and the prosocial
motives were indirect; it is possible that evaluation of indirect prosocial consequences of actions
(i.e. “social mindfulness”) is a later-developing understanding that requires, but is not reducible
to, these earlier-emerging social-cognitive skills. However, the current work does not fully
address exactly what is driving the developmental change in children’s responses, and the
question remains open for future research.
Comparison between two cultures provides insights into the role of cultural values and
norms in children’s evaluation of considerate, socially-mindful actions. In all three studies, we
observed similar developmental trajectories in judgments among children in the U.S. and
children in China. This suggests that some culturally-independent social-cognitive processes
underlie the change. It also suggests that socialization practices themselves – such as explicit
tuition in specific cultural norms of politeness/considerateness – are not sufficient to explain the
pattern of results. In our study, Chinese children were more likely to refer explicitly to “leaving a
choice for others” in their explanations (Study 1). One possibility is that the frequent exposure to
considerateness as an explicit cultural norm leads Chinese children to be better at clearly

EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
25
articulating the rationale for their judgments. For instance, an allegory widely taught to Chinese
preschoolers describes a 4-year-old boy named Kong Rong choosing a smaller pear for himself
while giving away a bigger pear to other people, not only highlighting the value of being
considerate of other people’s needs but also making it an explicit moral imperative.
Based on our analysis above, we favor the idea of further exploring developmental
changes that broaden social attention: in particular we suggest that with age children are more
likely to consider consequences to the agent (or the self) in the context of indirect consequences
to others in the surrounding social environment. Social attention may be facilitated by a variety
of socialization practices, including explicit norms around politeness, but also including other
ways of highlighting the social consequences of one’s own actions to specific individuals or in
specific cases. Our data leaves open the question of how these cognitions are transmitted to
children in different cultural contexts.
Relatedly, our findings are consistent with recent work showing that children's beliefs
about autonomy and freedom of choice emerge in childhood across cultures (Kushnir et al, 2015;
Wente et al., 2016; Chernyak et al., 2013, 2019). Our work adds to this line of work by showing
that, at least by age 6, children not only understand that one has autonomy and has the free will
to choose for oneself, but also understand that granting others the same autonomy is valuable.
Our findings are particularly noteworthy given a large literature documenting cultural variation
in how much people’s choice reflects their own personal preference (Savani et al., 2010), how
much personal choice enhance intrinsic motivation (Iyengar & Lepper, 1999), and how much
people view actions as free choices (Miller, Bersoff, & Hawrood, 1990). The current findings
suggest that despite the potential individual differences in the subjective value of choice, children
and adults in both the U.S. and China overall consider having a choice as something desirable for

EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
26
others. Certainly, even in societies that value choice, having too many choices can become a
burden and induce cognitive overload (Schwartz, 2004; Botti & Iyengar, 2006). Whether, and in
what contexts, children understand the cost of having too many choices remains an interesting
question for future work.
The task structure in the current work is similar to a previous study with adults (Van
Doesum et al., 2013). This allowed us to conceptually replicate their results with adults and
address our main question about its development across two cultures. To this end, rather than
adopting the task in prior work that provided minimal context, we designed our task to follow a
story about two friends at a snack time, providing a familiar context that is easy to understand
even for young children. Note that the characters’ preferences (both the actor and the
beneficiary) were left unknown or ambiguous; this was a deliberate design decision for setting up
a situation quite distinct from a typical prosocial context. Indeed, children’s evaluations might
change depending on the available information about the characters’ preference or the
relationship between the characters. Below we provide some speculations.
First, children may readily take into account the beneficiary’s preferences. If Jenny
knows that the next person dislikes chocolate mousses for sure, then it seems just fine for Jenny
to take the only chocolate mousse; but if Jenny knows that the next person really wants a
chocolate mousse or is allergic to an ingredient in the fruit tart, then taking the only chocolate
mousse away seems even less considerate. Second, children might also consider information
about the actor’s preferences. For instance, if Jenny really likes chocolate mousse but still takes
one of the two fruit tarts and leaves the only chocolate mousse to the next person, her choice
might be considered even more praiseworthy. Alternatively, if Jenny loves chocolate cake and
thus took it for herself, her choice may be considered more appropriate than doing so without a

EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
27
clear reason. Finally, our social expectations about how we should behave towards friends might
be different than how we should behave towards people who are not our friends. Thus, the
evaluations may change as the relationship between the actor and the beneficiary change. Future
work can extend our paradigm to further investigate the interactions between the act of leaving
choice and other aspects of children’s mental state understanding and understanding of peer
relationship.
In our study, we used a dichotomous-choice design where children were asked to
compare who is a nicer friend between the two main characters. This was designed to create the
strongest case to test whether children can distinguish someone who acts considerately from
those who do not. However, a remaining question is whether children also infer prosocial
intention from the act of leaving a choice for others even without direct comparison to an
inconsiderate act. One way to address this question is to modify the current paradigm to present
only one main character (i.e., Jenny) and ask children to explain why Jenny took one of the
apples.
Another remaining question is whether, or to what extent, children and adults view social
mindfulness as normative and obligatory. In Western cultures (the U.S. and the Netherlands)
adults’ tendency to leave a choice for others is correlated with personality factors that are geared
toward prosociality (e.g., honesty, agreeableness and a prosocial value) but not correlated with
following social norms (e.g. conscientiousness) (see Van Doesum, Van Lange, & Van Lange,
2013, Study 4). Also, adults seem more lenient and forgiving of other people’s inconsiderate
actions as compared to their harmful or non-cooperative actions (Van Lange & Van Doesum,
2015). These findings tentatively suggest that even for adults, though most people would
positively evaluate social mindfulness, they do not consider it an obligation. However, it is still

EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
28
an open question whether this varies across a wider range of cultures. Our developmental
findings might speak to this issue; if the explicit norms articulated by Chinese children lead to a
sense of obligation to act accordingly, they suggest a mechanism by which implicit social
evaluations become explicit obligations or norms.
Lastly, since our findings pertain to children’s third-personal evaluations, questions
remain about whether children are equally socially mindful when they are making their own
decisions. Decision making presents its own difficulties for children, as there may be
competition between their own self-interested preferences and their desire to be prosocial. It is
possible that in first-personal contexts, children who can explicitly articulate norms to be mindful
of others, and/or explicitly articulate the value of choice, would be more considerate in leaving
options for others when their own needs conflict. Future work can explore this possibility using a
modified version of our research paradigm that shifts to a first-personal context.
Prior work in social psychology proposes that prosocial (empathic) concerns and
perspective taking (theory of mind) underlies our appreciation of considerate, socially-mindful
actions (Van Doesum et al., 2013); from this perspective, 6-year-old children’s success in our
study is not inconsistent with this proposal. However, our work also points out that recognizing
and evaluating considerate actions may pose a nontrivial inference problem. Even though young
children are highly attuned to others’ behaviors and intentions, recognizing the considerateness
of others’ actions by reasoning about their potential consequences may be a hard-won feat. Our
work provides a first step towards understanding the social-cognitive capacities underlying
these sophisticated intuitions as well as how they develop in childhood.
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Tables and Figures
Table 1. Percentages of children’s explanations that referred to the concept of “leaving
choice for others” when asked who was a nicer friend split by age and culture in Study 1.
4-year-olds
5-year-olds
6-year-olds
Total
U.S.
8.3%
25%
37.5%
23.6%
China
25.0%
33%
79.2%
47.2%
Table 2. Percentages of children’s explanations that referred to the concept of “leaving
choice for others” split by age and culture in each condition of Study 2.
4-year-olds
5-year-olds
6-year-olds
Total
Positive vs.
Neutral
U.S.
0%
13.3%
23.3%
12.2%
China
6.7%
0%
36.7%
14.6%
Negative vs.
Neutral
U.S.
10%
10%
43.3%
21.1%
China
13.3%
16.7%
40%
23.5%

EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
36
Figure 1. Examples of the story setup of Study 1. Children heard about Sophie (the
character in red) waiting in a “snack line” twice to choose a fruit, each time behind one of her
friends, Bella or Jenny. Each friend chose one fruit out of three fruits. One friend took an apple
from one apple and two bananas, leaving Sophie with two bananas; the other friend took an
apple from two apples and one banana, leaving Sophie with an apple and a banana.

EVALUATIONS OF SOCIAL MINDFULNESS
37
Figure 2. Percentages of participants choosing the friend who left a choice split by
age group in the U.S. and China in Study 1. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.
Asterisks represent significance of Binomial Sign tests. **: p < .01, ***: p < .001.
Figure 3. Examples of the story setup of Study 2. In the Positive vs. Neutral
condition, both friends left Sophie with one apple and one banana, but one friend took an
apple from two apples and one banana (the Positive friend), while the other friend took an
orange out of one apple, one banana, and one orange (the Neutral friend). In the Negative vs.
Neutral condition, both friends left two bananas, but one friend took an apple from one apple
and two bananas (the Negative friend), while the other friend simply took one of the three
bananas (the Neutral friend).

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38
Figure 4. Percentages of participants choosing the Positive friend in the Positive vs.
Neutral condition and choosing the Neutral character in Negative vs. Neutral condition in
Study 2, split by age group and culture. Error bars represent 95% CI. Asterisks represent
significance of Binomial Sign tests. **: p < .01, ***: p < .001.