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To Give or Not to Give: Children’s and Adolescents’ Sharing and Moral Negotiations in Economic Decision Situations
Abstract
This study interconnects developmental psychology of fair and moral behavior with economic game theory. One hundred eighty-nine 9- to 17-year-old students shared a sum of money as individuals and groups with another anonymous group (dictator game). Individual allocations did not differ by age but did by gender and were predicted by participants' preferences for fair allocations. Group decision making followed a majority process. Level of moral reasoning did not predict individual offers, but group members with a higher moral reasoning ability were more influential during group negotiations and in influencing group outcomes. The youngest participants justified offers more frequently by referring to simple distribution principles. Older participants employed more complex reasons to justify deviations from allocation principles.
... That is, whereas sharing may resolve unmet material needs, helping and comforting entails resolving unmet instrumental needs and unmet emotional needs, respectively. Thus, these different prosocial behaviors require the recognition of the needs and desires of others (Fehr et al., 2013;Gummerum et al., 2008;Güroglu et al., 2009;Imuta et al., 2016;Warneken & Tomasello, 2007). Yet, compared to helping and comforting, sharing may also require a child to inhibit impulses to keep resources for themselves (Aguilar-Pardo et al., 2013;. ...
... Prior cross-sectional studies on age-related changes in sharing behavior found that 8-or 9-year-old children shared more than 3-and 4-year-old children (Benenson et al., 2007;Fehr et al., 2008;Ongley & Malti, 2014), thus suggesting increased sharing behavior with age. Nevertheless, other cross-sectional studies showed that 8-year-old children shared similar to or more than youth aged 12 (Fehr et al., 2013;Gummerum et al., 2008;Güroglu et al., 2009Güroglu et al., , 2014Leman et al., 2009;Ongley & Malti, 2014). Limited longitudinal work suggests a nonlinear pattern. ...
... Although not exclusively, two characteristics of the actor may be of importance when studying the development of sharing behavior, namely the child's sex and a child's social preference among peers. Cross-sectional studies showed that girls are more generous than boys (Fabes & Eisenberg, 1998;Fehr et al., 2013;Gummerum et al., 2008;van de Groep et al., 2019). Several explanations for this sex difference have been proposed. ...
This study examined the sex-specific developmental trajectories of sharing behavior in the Dictator Game with an anonymous other, best friend, and disliked peer and associations with peer likeability and peer dislikeability in 1,108 children (50.5% boys) followed annually across grades 2–6 (ages 8–12) of elementary school. Results showed that sharing with an anonymous other and disliked peer remained stable over time. Sharing with a best friend decreased slightly between grades 2 and 5 and then remained stable. Girls consistently shared more with all recipients than boys. Moreover, children who were liked by classmates shared more with a best friend, while disliked children shared less with all recipients. Findings emphasize the importance of considering characteristics of both recipient and actor when studying the development of sharing behavior.
... Age may also influence other aspects of judgments and reasoning, which we evaluate with two related sets of empirical findings: distribution of resources and social exclusion. Research on distribution of resources suggests that children tend to use fairness norms to allocate resources equally (Gummerum, Keller, Takezawa, & Mata, 2008;Shaw & Olson, 2012;Ulber, Hamann, & Tomasello, 2015) and prefer children who follow fairness norms (Cooley & Killen, 2015). Of note, however, there are some developmental differences, with older children disapproving more of economic inequalities than younger children. ...
... Between the ages of 3 and 8 years, children continue to distribute resources, such as erasers, equally to the point of discarding a resource to create equality (Shaw & Olson, 2012). Young people between the ages of 9 and 17 years tend to share equally (Gummerum et al., 2008). Furthermore, children between the ages of 3 and 6 years prefer peers who allocate resources equally (Cooley & Killen, 2015). ...
... Furthermore, children between the ages of 3 and 6 years prefer peers who allocate resources equally (Cooley & Killen, 2015). Children even prefer equality when they stand to gain from unequal distribution of resources (Cooley & Killen, 2015;Gummerum et al., 2008). Thus, from a young age, people tend to prefer fairness. ...
This study examined children's and adolescents' reasoning about the exclusion of others in peer and school contexts. Participants (80 8-year-olds, 85 11-year-olds, 74 14-year-olds, and 73 20-year-olds) were asked to judge and reason about the acceptability of exclusion from novel groups by children and school principals. Three contexts for exclusion between two groups were systematically varied: unequal economic status, geographical location, and a control (no reason provided for group differences). Regardless of condition, participants believed that exclusion was less acceptable in peer contexts than in school contexts and when children were excluded rather than principals. Participants also used more moral and less social conventional reasoning for peer contexts than for school contexts. In terms of condition, whereas 8-year-olds rated exclusion based on unequal economic status as less acceptable than exclusion based on geographical location or no reason when enacted by a principal, 14-year-olds rated the unequal economic condition as more acceptable than the other two contexts. The 11- and 20-year-olds did not distinguish economic status differences. The findings suggest that children and adolescents are sensitive to context and take multiple variables into account, including the type of group difference (socioeconomic status or other reasons), authority status of the perpetrator of exclusion, and setting (school or peer group). Patterns may have differed from past research because of the sociocultural context in which exclusion was embedded and the contexts of group differences.
... However, fairness is often undermined by competing concerns (e.g., group loyalty), as is evidenced by the pervasive social inequality in our societies (Rutland & Killen, 2017). The development of fairness, and the biases which disrupt fair processes, can be examined with tasks where children decide how to distribute resources (e.g., Blake & McAuliffe, 2011;Gummerum et al., 2008). From age 4, children sacrifice rewards both to help others (Benenson et al., 2007) and to reject disadvantageous inequality proposed by others (Blake et al., 2015). ...
... One potential limitation is that the nature of the online procedure meant that parents often observed their children complete the study, and indeed, the experimenter knew their choices. Typically, children's allocations are made seemingly privately (Gummerum et al., 2008), to minimize the influence of social desirability. An interesting question is whether these children may have felt that greater bias may actually have been desired by their parents, given the history of conflict. ...
Intergroup resource allocation was examined among 333 children aged 7-11 (51.9% female) within three settings of former intergroup conflict (January-June 2021). Children represented both ethno-religious minority and majority groups (Republic of North Macedonia: Albanians, Macedonians; Croatia: Serbs, Croats; Northern Ireland: Catholics, Protestants), from predominantly White and middle-class families. Ingroup bias in average resource allocation amounts was demonstrated by both minority and majority children, across settings, in the context of novel targets (historic conflict rivals). Majority children were also more likely to give equally (which maintains the status quo) than minority children. Giving equally increased with age for both minority and majority children, despite being in "zero-sum," conflict settings. Equitable intergroup resource allocation in such settings has implications for conflict transformation.
... The Dictator Game is also useful for determining factors that contribute to prosocial resource allotment, such as recipients' status as an out-group versus in-group member (Gummerum et al. 2009;Cooley and Killen 2015), or a member of a disadvantaged group . Various studies have examined possible motivations and circumstances for the prosocial allotment of resources in neurotypical children, such as inequity aversion (Fehr and Schmidt 1999;Bolton and Ockenfels 2000;Cooley and Killen 2015;Elenbaas and Killen 2016), recognition of fairness and merit of the recipient (Forsythe et al. 1994;Gummerum et al. 2008;Rizzo et al. 2016), and motivation for future rewards (Butler, et al. 2011). Actor characteristics also determine amounts shared. ...
... Actor characteristics also determine amounts shared. For example, females generally donate more than males (Gummerum et al. 2008(Gummerum et al. , 2010, and children from higher socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds tend to share more than children from lower SES backgrounds (Benenson et al. 2007). A comparison of spontaneous and passive sharing in Chinese and Indian children corroborated the intuition that cultural background and beliefs influence sharing behavior in children as well (Rao and Stewart 1999). ...
Studies have examined the association between theory of mind (ToM) and prosocial behavior in children with mixed results. A handful of studies have examined prosocial sharing behavior in children with autism, who typically exhibit ToM deficits. Studies using resource allocation tasks have generally failed to find significant differences between the sharing behavior of children with autism and neurotypical children. We presented 18 neurotypical children and 33 children with autism with the Dictator Game. Children had the opportunity to allocate toys in recipient present and absent conditions. Both groups donated more items in the recipient present versus absent condition and chose the prosocial option at above chance levels. Children with autism behave as prosocially as neurotypical children do in this paradigm.
... Developmental research supports the notion that children cultivate a stronger sense of fairness and other-oriented tendencies from middle childhood to adolescence (Gummerum, Keller, Takezawa, & Mata, 2008). Indeed, elementary school American children believe that they must show respect to their peers in order to be respected by them, a norm which denotes reciprocity and social coordination (Audley et al., 2019;Audley-Piotrowski, Hsueh, & Cohen, 2008;Hsueh et al., 2005). ...
... This reflects older children's increased attunement to fairness-a focus that extends to how they understand and make meaning of respect. Together, these findings support and expand upon the existing literature on developmental increases in fairness-related reasoning in the context of social conflicts (Damon, 1975;Krettenauer et al., 2014) and findings on resource allocation and inequity aversion (Gummerum et al., 2008;Malti et al., 2016b;Paulus, 2014). ...
Respect is an integral part of everyday life. It is a virtue central to the aim of living an ethically good life. Despite its importance, little is known about its emergence, development, correlates, and consequences. In this monograph, we aim to fill this gap by presenting empirical work on children's and adolescents' thinking and feelings about respect. Specifically, we examined the development of respect in ethnically diverse samples of children between the ages of 5 and 15 years ( N = 476). Using a narrative and semi‐structured interview, as well as self‐, caregiver‐ and teacher‐reports, and peer‐nominations, we collected information on children's respect conceptions and reasoning, as well as on the social‐emotional correlates and prosocial and aggressive behavioral outcomes of respect.
We begin with a review of theoretical accounts on respect. This includes a selective overview of the history of respect in philosophy and psychology in Chapter I. Here, we discuss early writings and conceptualizations of respect across the seminal works of Kant and others. We then provide an account of the various ways in which respect is conceptualized across the psychological literature. In Chapter II, we review extant developmental theory and research on respect and its development, correlates, and behavioral consequences. In this chapter, as part of our developmental framework, we discuss how respect is related and distinct from other emotions such as sympathy and admiration.
Next, we describe our methodology (Chapter III). This includes a summary of our research aims, samples, and measures used for exploring this novel area of research. Our primary goals were to examine how children and adolescents conceptualize respect, how their conceptualizations differ by age, whether and to what degree children feel respect toward others' “good” behavior (i.e., respect evaluations for behavior rooted in ethical norms of kindness, fairness, and personal achievement goals), and how children's respect is related to other ethical emotions and behaviors.
The next three chapters provide a summary of our empirical findings. Chapter IV showcases our prominent results on the development of children's conceptions of respect. Results revealed that children, across age, considered prosociality to be the most important component involved in conceptualizations of respect. We also found age‐related increases in children's beliefs about fairness as a core component of respect. Children and adolescents also reported feeling higher levels of respect for behavior in the ethical domain (e.g., sharing fairly and inclusion) than behavior in the personal domain (i.e., achieving high grades in school). Chapter V investigates how sympathy and feelings of sadness over wrongdoing relate to respect conceptions and respect for behavior. Our findings show that sadness over wrongdoing was positively associated with adolescents' fairness conceptions of respect. Sympathy was positively related to children's feelings of respect toward others' ethical behavior. In Chapter VI, we present links between respect and social behavior. Our findings provide some evidence that children's feelings of respect are positively linked with prosocial behavior and children's conceptions of respect (particularly those reflecting themes of fairness and equality) are negatively related to physical aggression.
In the last two chapters, we discuss the empirical findings and their implications for practice and policy. In Chapter VII, we draw upon recent work in the field of social‐emotional development to interpret our results and provide insight into how our findings extend previous seminal work on the development of respect from early childhood to adolescence. Finally, in Chapter VIII, we conclude by discussing implications for educational and clinical practice with children and adolescents, as well as social policies aimed at reducing discrimination and nurturing children's well‐being and positive peer relationships.
... It should be mentioned that only fourth graders proposed nearly equal distribution in the UG. Previous studies have revealed that younger children tend to adopt simple outcome equality as the fairness norm (Gummerum et al., 2008) and prefer to offer strategic fair distribution out of the desire for social approval (Gonzalez et al., 2021). Conversely, adolescents generally possess a higher level of moral cognition, a deeper understanding of fairness norms, and an increased sense of self-reliance, which enables them to realize that they do not need to be overly pleasing to others (Yucel et al., 2022). ...
Combining the dictator game (DG) and the ultimatum game (UG), this study recruited 546 Chinese children (321 boys, aged 9–12 years) as distributors, and found that both peer comparison and social value orientation (SVO) significantly influenced children's distributive fairness from late childhood to early adolescence. Results showed that as the unfairness of peer proposals increased, participants decreased the amount of gold coins distributed to the receiver in both tasks, revealing a peer comparison effect. This effect was more pronounced for adolescents than for children in both tasks. In addition, participants' fair distribution behaviors in the DG showed a three‐way interaction effect of SVO, grade, and peer comparison. Specifically, for proselfs, children were not influenced by peers and consistently proposed self‐interested distributions, whereas adolescents exhibited a peer comparison effect; for prosocials, both children and adolescents were influenced by peers, but children decreased the amount of their distributions only when they saw peers make extremely unfair distributions, whereas adolescents decreased the amount of their distributions when they saw peers make both mildly and extremely unfair distributions. This study highlights the importance of social environment and personal trait in shaping children's fair distribution behavior during the transition from late childhood to early adolescence.
... Scholars argued that gender differences in prosocial behaviours may be a result of gender differences in parents' socialization of young children (e.g. : parents reinforce altruistic behaviour for girls more frequently and consistently (Gummerum et al., 2008). It is possible that 3-5-year children are too young to present gender differences due to socialization, and this resulted in null gender differences here. ...
Prosocial behaviour is a hallmark of social and emotional competence during childhood. Thus, promoting the development of children's prosocial behaviour can have important downstream benefits for individuals and society. Previous studies indicated that there is a positive effect of negative moral emotions on prosocial behaviour, but the influence of positive moral emotions on prosocial behaviour remains largely unknown. This study adopted three experiments to investigate the influence of positive moral emotions on three aspects of prosocial behaviour in 3–5‐year‐old children. After inducing positive moral emotions in children, they were observed either in helping (Experiment 1, N = 151, 75 boys), sharing (Experiment 2, N = 141, 69 boys) or comforting (Experiment 3, N = 132, 66 boys) scenarios. Results showed that: (1) children's helping, sharing and comforting behaviours in the moral emotions (experimental) group were significantly higher than those in the control group, suggesting that positive moral emotions could positively influence the examined prosocial behaviours; (2) there were age differences in children's helping, sharing and comforting, but the effect of positive moral emotions on the examined prosocial behaviours did not differ by age and gender. These findings point to the need for fostering positive moral emotions in early cultivation of children's prosocial behaviour during pre‐schooler education.
... Sharing is done anonymously, and the recipient has no opportunity to respond, retaliate, or evaluate the dictator (Gummerum et al., 2010). In the dictator experiment, the behavior of a dictator is influenced not only by maximizing their own financial gain but also by social norms, which constrain self-interested behavior by considering the social impact of their own behavior (Gummerum et al., 2008). The current research on human-robot interaction mainly uses dictator or ultimatum experimental paradigms to explore human acceptance and refusal behavior toward robot quotes . ...
Introduction
The relationship between robots and humans is becoming increasingly close and will become an inseparable part of work and life with humans and robots working together. Sharing, which involves distributing goods between individuals and others, involves individuals as potential beneficiaries and the possibility of giving up the interests of others. In human teams, individual sharing behaviors are influenced by morality and reputation. However, the impact on individuals’ sharing behaviors in human-robot collaborative teams remains unclear-individuals may consider morality and reputation differently when sharing with robot or human partners. In this study, three experiments were conducted using the dictator game paradigm, aiming to compare the effects and mechanisms of morality and reputation on sharing behaviors in human and human-robot teams.
Methods
Experiment 1 involving 18 participants was conducted. Experiment 2 involving 74 participants was conducted. Experiment 3 involving 128 participants was conducted.
Results
Experiment 1 validated the differences in human sharing behaviors when the agents were robots and humans. Experiment 2 verifies that moral constraints and reputation constraints affect sharing behaviors in human-robot teams. Experiment 3 further reveals the mechanism of differences in sharing behaviors in human-robot teams, where reputation concern plays a mediating role in the impact of moral constraint on sharing behaviors, and the agent type plays a moderating role in the impact of moral constraint on reputation concern and sharing behaviors.
Discussion
The results of this study contribute to a better understanding of the interaction mechanism of human-robot teams. In the future, the formulation of human-robot collaborative team rules and the setting of interaction environments can consider the potential motivation of human behavior from both morality and reputation perspectives and achieve better work performance.
... In a standard dictator game, participants are often asked to determine how much of a fixed sum they would like to give unilaterally to an anonymous person or party, thereby providing an objective, behavioral measure of generosity that is frequently used in research, including experiments with adolescents (Engels, 2011;Ibbotson, 2014;Kosse et al., 2020). However, we chose to use raffle tickets rather than actual money at the recommendations of both our partner organization and past research that has used dictator games with children and adolescents (e.g., Gummerum et al., 2008;Kosse et al., 2020). Moreover, utilizing raffle tickets was practically more feasible than physical money given that we collected data out in the fieldan actual sports field-where transporting money may have been challenging. ...
In partnership with a sport-based Experiential Philanthropy Intervention – The Play Better Program – we conducted a pre-registered, longitudinal experiment examining whether repeatedly reflecting on prosocial activity could boost adolescents’ objective generosity. Adolescents (N = 114; aged 9–16) practiced charitable giving throughout their 2-month sports season and were randomly assigned to repeatedly reflect on the importance of their prosocial activity (Reflection condition) or to write about their everyday activities (Control condition). Adolescents completed an objective measure of generosity at pre- and post-intervention and self-reported measures of prosocial character. Across conditions, adolescents donated objectively more at post- vs. pre-intervention. However, adolescents in the Reflection (vs. Control) condition were no more generous and did not report greater prosocial character at post-intervention. Overall, these findings highlight the malleability of human prosociality and the need for additional scholar-practitioner collaborations to uncover whether and how Experiential Philanthropy Interventions boost long-term generosity among the next generation of givers.
... . (Benenson, Pascoe, & Radmore, 2007;Gummerum, Hanoch, Keller, Parsons, & Hummel, 2010;Fehr et al., 2008), (Gummerum et al., 2010;Harbaugh, Krause, & Liday, 2003;Takezawa, Gummerum, & Keller, 2006). , (Gummerum, Keller, Takezawa, & Mata, 2008;Takezawa et al., 2006) (Harbaugh & Krause, 2000) . 7 7 (J. ...
Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the patterns and characteristics of distributive behavior in preschoolers, influence of inhibitory control and intelligence on the distributive behavior, and associations between them.Methods: The data was collected through a one-on-one interview experiment with 328 children aged 3–5 years old attending daycare centers and kindergartens. The distributive behavior was measured by modifying the procedure of the dictator game. Children’s cognitive and emotional inhibitory control (IC) were assessed using the day-night task and the reverse compensation task respectively. The intelligence was assessed using the K-WPPSI short form test. Pearson's correlation, paired samples t-test, one-way ANOVA, McNemar test, multiple regression, and the verification of mediation were performed to analyze the dataResults: First, there were differences among boys in resource allocation according to the type of group (in-group vs. outgroup). That is, boys aged four and five gave more resources to classmates rather than anonymous children. Second, cognitive IC and performance intelligence were associated with distributive behavior towards anonymous children. However, only performance intelligence was related to the children’s distributive behavior towards their classmates. Lastly, performance intelligence was completely mediated in the association between cognitive IC and distributive behavior towards anonymous children.Conclusion: We provide empirical evidence that cognitive IC and thinking skills necessary for performance intelligence were related to distributive behavior towards outgroup. In particular, boys aged four and five tended to consider more social relations in distributive behavior. This may be useful information for teaching altruism and sharing in early childhood.
... Bauer et al. (2014) show that the children of parents with low education are less altruistic, more selfish, and more likely to be weakly spiteful. Gummerum, Hanoch, et al. (2010) and Gummerum, Keller, et al. (2008) show that females tend to be more altruistic due to a higher preference for equal splits and that moral judgment influences altruism. Malti et al. (2009) The second stream of literature we contribute is the one on nudging, especially using AI and machines. ...
This thesis addresses the impacts of digitization on economic behaviors. Chapter 1 deals with the reduction in transportation and search costs and how it impacts the online labor market. In recent years, there has been a growing shift from in-person to remote work, creating new jobs and a new work environment in which workers may be more inclined to manage their work hours and work/leisure trade-offs. I use the introduction of the widely played mobile game Pokémon Go to observe its impact on the behaviors of workers on the online labor platform Amazon Mechanical Turk. I show that an increase in the relative use of Pokémon Go leads to a daily decrease in the proportion of US workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Chapter 2 investigates the results of a lab-in-the-field experiment conducted in a French primary school in July 2019, where a smart speaker, a robot, and an adult were attempting to influence children in their choice of sharing marbles with other kids. We adapted a dictator game for the children audience and then estimated the impact of two different nudging strategies (Social Proximity and Peer-Effect) on the outcome of the dictator game. During the interaction with the children, the nudges were less effective when implemented by the adult as compared to the voice assistants, shedding light on the potential that these emerging devices have when manipulating their vulnerable audience. Chapter 3 investigates the economic motives to manipulate social media popularity through fake follower acquisition by professional soccer players. We take advantage of Twitter's suspicious account removal held in July 2018 to proxy fake followers. Results show that fake followers significantly impact players' value, i.e., transfer fees, only if the transfer occurs within 1 to 6 months after the Twitter account creation.
... Sin embargo, otra investigación (Beneson et al., 2007) con niños de menor edad (4, 6 y 9 años) no encontró diferencias significativas entre género, pero mostró un efecto significativo del grupo socioeconómico (GSE) sobre la conducta altruista de los niños. Gummerum et al. (2008) mostraron que las preferencias por distribuciones equitativas predicen las donaciones en el juego del dictador de niños y adolescentes entre 9 a 17 años, y Asscheman et al., (2020) en un estudio longitudinal con niños desde los 8 a 12 años mostraron que los niveles de altruismo con extraños y con rivales permanecieron bajos y estables, mientras que con amigos se redujeron entre segundo y quinto grado y a partir de ahí permanecieron estables. Además, en este último estudio las niñas entregaron sistemáticamente donaciones más altas a los receptores. ...
Resumen
Es sabido que las consideraciones morales de los actores interactúan con factores contextuales. Este artículo explora la hipótesis de que la función guía de las consideraciones morales de los adolescentes es anulada cuando existe información sobre la riqueza de los potenciales beneficiarios. Para contrastar esta hipótesis, se estudia el altruismo de adolescentes usando experimentos de laboratorio en-el-campo con el juego del dictador en dos condiciones: si los dictadores tenían o no información sobre la riqueza de sus contrapartes. Además, se explora el efecto de moderación de las consideraciones morales sobre la relación entre las condiciones experimentales y el altruismo. Los resultados muestran que los adolescentes que conocieron la riqueza de los otros fueron, en promedio, menos altruistas. También se encontró que la relación entre condiciones experimentales y altruismo estuvo moderada por la valoración del fundamento moral del daño. Así, adolescentes que valoran no dañar a otros tienden a ser más altruistas cuando no conocen la riqueza de sus beneficiarios.
... Mean initial donations across both sessions were 2.7 (s.d. = 2.3), and did not significantly differ across age (in line with[54][55][56]; LMM: β = −0.069, 95% CI [−0.164, 0.025], p = 0.150; electronic supplementary material, table S3, model 1). ...
Social learning is fundamental to human development, helping individuals adapt to changing circumstances and cooperate in groups. During the formative years of adolescence, the social environment shapes people's socio-cognitive skills needed in adulthood. Although peer influence among adolescents is traditionally associated with risky and unruly conduct, with long-term negative effects on educational, economic and health outcomes, recent findings suggest that peers may also have a positive impact. Here, we present a series of experiments with 10–20-year-olds ( n = 146) showing that positive and negative peer effects reflect a domain-general factor of social information use which declines during adolescence. Exposure to disobedient peers provoked rule breaking, and selfish peers reduced prosocial behaviour, particularly in early adolescence. However, compliant peers also promoted rule compliance and fair peers increased prosociality. A belief formation task further revealed that younger adolescents tend to assimilate social information, while older adolescents prioritize personal views. Our results highlight early adolescence as a key window for peer-based interventions to improve developmental trajectories.
... That is, those children who heard a sharing story, who explicitly recounted more of this prosocial theme, were no more generous post-story than children who heard a neutral story (busy) and recalled more of the busy theme. This finding may relate to the knowledge-behavior gap previously observed in children of this age; an awareness of fairness does not tend to correspond with actions in accordance with this knowledge, at least not in the absence of multiple specific examples of generosity (Blake, 2018;Blake, McAuliffe, & Warneken, 2014;Du & Hao, 2018;Gummerum, Keller, Takezawa, & Mata, 2008). Our single presentation of a moral tale, without further reinforcement of the meaning, might not have been likely to have had an enduring effect on young children's subsequent decision making. ...
Previous research has suggested that moral stories depicting realistic characters may better facilitate children’s prosocial behavior than those containing anthropomorphized animal characters. The current study is a conceptual replication with a different sample and an extended age range. We examined the relationships among story character realism (anthropomorphized animal or human), theme (sharing or busyness), age, and prosocial behavior (i.e., resource allocation). Four versions of an illustrated storybook were created: an Animal Sharing book, an Animal Busy book, a Human Sharing book, and a Human Busy book. A total of 179 children aged 3–7 years listened to one of the four versions of the story. Children’s sticker donating behavior was measured prior to hearing the story and again following a story recall task. All groups donated more stickers post-story than pre-story. Younger children were more likely to increase their donation than older children, and children who had made higher human internal state attributions in a previous experimental session donated more stickers post-story. In contrast to previous research, we found that a sharing-themed narrative depicting human characters was no more influential for sticker donation than the other stories.
... Prior developmental studies examined giving behavior towards unfamiliar others using the Dictator Game paradigm, in which an individual can give away valuable resources (e.g., coins or money; (Kahneman et al., 1986). These studies, that examined non-strategic costly giving, showed no behavioral differences between children, adolescents, and adults Gummerum et al., 2008;van de Groep et al., 2020a). Developmental differences were, however, observed in studies that utilized strategic interaction paradigms (i.e., games where giving behaviors can improve one's own situation via reciprocity, reputation, or public good, such as the Ultimatum Game; . ...
Giving is essential for forming and maintaining social relationships, which is an important developmental task for adolescents. This pre-registered fMRI study investigated behavioral and neural correlates of adolescents’ (N = 128, ages 9 – 19 years) small versus large size giving in different social contexts related to target (i.e., giving to a friend or unfamiliar peer) and peer presence (i.e., anonymous versus audience giving). Participants gave more in the small size than large size condition, more to friends than to unfamiliar peers, and more in the audience compared to anonymous condition. Giving very small or large amounts was associated with increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and anterior insula (AI), and older adolescents showed increased lateral and anterior PFC activation for small size giving. We observed activity in the intraparietal cortex (IPL), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and AI for giving to friends, but no age-related differences in this activity. Behaviorally, in contrast, we observed that older adolescents differentiated more in giving between friends and unfamiliar peers. Finally, we observed interactions between peer presence and target in the AI, and between giving magnitude and target in the precuneus. Together, findings reveal higher context-dependency of giving and more lateral PFC activity for small versus large giving in older adolescents.
... Developmental work on this topic frequently documents an increase in generosity with age (Benenson et al., 2007) , though there is mixed evidence for this relationship (Gummerum et al., 2008;Ibbotson, 2014). ...
Interpersonal trust is a key component of cooperation, helping support the complex social networks found across societies. Trust typically involves two parties, one who trusts by taking on risk through investment in a second party, who can be trustworthy and produce mutual benefits. To date, the developmental literature has focused primarily on the trustor, meaning we know little about the ontogeny of trustworthiness. Whereas trusting can be motivated by self-interest, one-shot trustworthiness is more squarely situated in the prosocial domain, involving a direct tradeoff between self-interest and others' interests. However, this raises the question of whether trustworthiness is distinct from generosity. In this preregistered study, we examine the origins of trustworthiness using an intuitive version of the Trust Game, in which a first party invests resources in a second party who can split the gains. We recruited N = 118 5-to-8 year-old American children (Mage = 6.94, n = 59 girls, 57% White, 88% of parents with bachelor's degree or higher), split between the Trustworthiness condition, where another party's investment is instrumental for obtaining greater resources, and the Generosity condition, where the other party is a passive recipient. We found that children in the Trustworthiness condition shared significantly more resources than those in the Generosity condition. Further, children in the Trustworthiness condition predicted that the first party expected them to share a greater number of resources. Overall, these results demonstrate that trustworthiness is distinct from generosity in childhood and suggest that children spontaneously grasp and engage in a key aspect of cooperation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
... Nevertheless, children failed to engage in equal sharing until ages 7-8. Studies also showed that the gap between moral judgment and sharing behavior is significant in early childhood and decreases with age (Blake et al., 2014;Gummerum et al., 2008;Rochat et al., 2009;Smith et al., 2013), suggesting that although three-year-olds know the norm of equal sharing, the weight that children attach to this norm increases with age when sharing involves a cost to the self. Developmental psychologists have proposed several possible psychological processes underlying the knowledge-behavior gap of egalitarian sharing behavior. ...
Preferring fair resource distribution reflects human cooperative nature, but its neural correlates in young children are not well known. We investigated the neural mechanism of egalitarian resource sharing in five-to six-year-old children to examine the possibility that early egalitarianism requires behavioral control to inhibit selfish impulses. In Study 1, children participated in a behavioral control task in which they either needed or did not need to inhibit their impulsive behavioral responses in order to quickly press a key. They subsequently allocated their resources to strangers by choosing a 2:2, 3:1, or 4:0 distribution. The activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal (dlpfc) regions was recorded by functional near-infrared spectroscopy measurements. We found that dlpfc regions were activated during cognitive tasks involving behavioral control and also during the equal, but not the more selfish, allocations. There was no difference among these allocations. The results did not show evidence of an ego depletion effect on children’s sharing behavior, which predicts that children will share less after their behavioral control is taxed in a cognitive task (i.e., their self-control resource depleted). Study 2 showed no activation of the dlpfc regions during third-party equal allocations in which there was no conflict between fairness and self-interest in the distribution of resources. Overall, we showed that costly equal sharing in young children relates to the activation of dlpfc regions. These results suggest that costly equal allocation has a common neural basis with behavioral control in five-to six-year-old children, implying that early egalitarian sharing requires dealing with conflicts between maximizing self-interest and following moral norms.
... 26,27 The limited research on relations between moral reasoning and prosocial behaviour in early childhood has yielded mixed findings, with some studies finding positive relations, 28 and others finding no relations. 29 In addition, how parents and peers facilitate moral and prosocial tendencies has been explored. In general, there is evidence that friends and peers are important for moral and prosocial development. ...
Moral development describes the emergence and changes in an individual’s understanding of, and feelings about, moral principles across the lifespan. Morality includes various dimensions, most prominently emotions, knowledge and reasoning, values, and morally relevant, prosocial behaviours. While some of these components strongly develop across the first five years of life, there are also great inter-individual differences that lay the foundation for individual differences in prosocial behaviour. These differences are believed to be due to biological and environmental factors. Developmental differences occur through maturation and are socialized by peers, parents, cultural values and practices.
... This foundation captures the moral concerns of individuals regarding altruistic reciprocity, linked to concepts such as justice, proportionality, and individual rights (M = 4.02, standard deviation (SD) = 0.79, Cronbach's α = 0.67). We focused only on this foundation since previous research indicates that the beliefs of young people regarding fairness relate to altruism and cooperation (Gummerum et al., 2008;Salgado, 2018). Table 1 summarises the descriptive statistics of the variables used in this study. ...
Moral decisions – that is, decisions that consider the consequences for the welfare of others – can be highly inconsistent across contexts. Here, we explore whether the altruism of young people is related to their willingness to cooperate with others, even in groups comprising non-reciprocating peers. Using the distinction between normative and cognitive expectations, we address this topic conducting several lab-in-the-field experiments with high-school students who played the dictator and linear public good games. We found that the altruism of young people in the dictator game and cooperation in the public good game were related, but only in the first rounds of the public good game. This indicates that young people orient their prosocial behaviour based on cognitive expectations, that is, they consider the information they receive regarding the free riding behaviour of peers and adapt their own. Nonetheless, young people who demonstrated high altruism tended to cooperate unconditionally, regardless of whether they belonged to a cooperative or uncooperative group, and despite disappointments. Finally, self-regarding young people were less likely to defect among cooperative peers. Therefore, group characteristics provide the boundary conditions for the consistency of the prosocial behaviour of young people. Some conceptual and policy implications are discussed.
... Related to the conception of fairness is children's moral development. Interestingly, the level of moral reasoning did not affect the individual decisions of 3rd to 11th graders on how to distribute a resource, but when playing in groups and discussing the decisions group members with more advanced moral reasoning had more impact on the group decisions in terms of stronger social influence (e.g., Gummerum, Keller, Takezawa, & Mata, 2008;Takezawa, Gummerum, & Keller, 2006). ...
Acting ecologically sustainably and not exhausting natural resources is becoming more and more important. Sustainable behavior can be investigated within the conceptual frame of resource dilemmas, in which users share a common, slowly regenerating resource. A conflict emerges between maximizing one's own profit and maintaining the resource for all users. Although many studies have investigated adults' behavior in resource dilemmas, barely anything is known about how children deal with such situations and which factors affect their behavior. Due to their still developing cognitive and social skills as well as their self-control, they might act differently than adults. In the current study, 114 children aged 6 to 11 years played a fishing conflict game. We manipulated (a) whether children played alone or in groups, (b) whether withdrawal was limited or not, and (c) whether children were allowed to communicate within the groups or not. In addition, children's individual characteristics that were expected to be related to their sustainable behavior were assessed (i.e., delay of gratification, fairness concept, relatedness to nature, math grade, and age). Children's success in maintaining the resource strongly depended on the game context. Similar to adults, children acted more ecologically sustainably when they played alone, when the withdrawal was limited, and when communication was allowed. In addition, older children acted more sustainably than younger children. The results are discussed in the light of findings with adults and with regard to potential interventions that aim at enhancing children's sustainable behavior.
... Preschoolers are sensitive to different contextual cues, which they manage to integrate to arrive at a consistent moral decision: while visual cues seem to inform children's decision-making of perpetuating an inequality, so do cues about luxury and necessary resources relating to recipients' needs and well-being. Equality concerns seem to remain the default option when no such opposing cues exist (Gummerum, Keller, Takezawa, & Mata, 2008;Ulber, Hamann, & Tomasello, 2015). ...
The present study investigated preschoolers' multiple sociomoral considerations (equality, equity, perpetuating inequality) in a third-party context of social inequality. Using a resource allocation task involving one wealthy and one poor character, we examined how 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 100) allocated either necessary (must-have) or luxury (nice-to-have) resources. In addition, preschoolers’ emotions, reasoning, and judgments were assessed. Results indicated that preschoolers distributing more resources to wealthy than poor others displayed a decision-making pattern distinct from preschoolers allocating equally or equitably and largely matched the numeric proportions of the inequality in their allocations. In addition, preschoolers were sensitive to the differential implications of necessary and luxury resources, thereby considering others’ needs in their moral decisions. Emotions were related to reasoning, but did not mediate the relationship between judgment and behavior. These findings demonstrate novel aspects of preschoolers’ multifaceted moral considerations in the context of resource inequality.
... However, the evidence is mixed. Gummerum, Keller, Takezawa, and Mata (2008) found no age-related trend in sharing behaviour beyond childhood, and others reported a decline particularly for boys (Leman, Keller, Takezawa, & Gummerum, 2009;Ongley & Malti, 2014). ...
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.
... This foundation captures the moral concerns of individuals regarding altruistic reciprocity, linked to concepts such as justice, proportionality, and individual rights (M = 4.02, standard deviation (SD) = 0.79, Cronbach's α = 0.67). We focused only on this foundation since previous research indicates that the beliefs of young people regarding fairness relate to altruism and cooperation (Gummerum et al., 2008;Salgado, 2018). Table 1 summarises the descriptive statistics of the variables used in this study. ...
Moral decisions – that is, decisions that consider the consequences for the welfare of others – can be highly inconsistent across contexts. Here, we explore whether the altruism of young people is related to their willingness to cooperate with others, even in groups comprising non-reciprocating peers. Using the distinction between normative and cognitive expectations, we address this topic conducting several lab-in-the-field experiments with high-school students who played the dictator and linear public good games. We found that the altruism of young people in the dictator game and cooperation in the public good game were related, but only in the first rounds of the public good game. This indicates that young people orient their prosocial behaviour based on cognitive expectations, that is, they consider the information they receive regarding the free riding behaviour of peers and adapt their own. Nonetheless, young people who demonstrated high altruism tended to cooperate unconditionally, regardless of whether they belonged to a cooperative or uncooperative group, and despite disappointments. Finally, self-regarding young people were less likely to defect among cooperative peers. Therefore, group characteristics provide the boundary conditions for the consistency of the prosocial behaviour of young people. Some conceptual and policy implications are discussed.
... To address such questions, researchers have employed a variety Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00260-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. of tasks adapted from those used in economic decisionmaking games, including simplified versions of the dictator and ultimatum games (e.g., Benenson et al. 2007; Blake and Rand 2010;Gummerum et al. 2008Gummerum et al. , 2010Harbaugh and Krause 2000), and the prosocial choice test (e.g., Brownell et al. 2009;Claidiere et al. 2015;Dahlman et al. 2007;Fehr et al. 2008;House et al. 2012House et al. , 2013Schmitz et al. 2015). The most common, although not exclusive (e.g., House et al. 2012), developmental pattern witnessed across tasks is one in which children become increasingly generous with age (e.g., Benenson et al. 2007;Blake and Rand 2010;Brownell et al. 2009;Gummerum et al. 2010), a pattern that is most evident in situations where the donor pays no direct or relative cost for their generosity (e.g., Dahlman et al. 2007;Fehr et al. 2008; Thompson et al. 1997). ...
Does kindness always pay? The influence of recipient affection and generosity on young children's allocation decisions in a resource distribution task. Abstract The aim of the current study was to determine whether the level of generosity shown by 3-to 8-year-old children (N = 136; M age = 69 months) in a resource distribution task would vary according to whether the recipient had previously displayed kind (affection and generosity) and/or non-kind (non-affection and non-generosity) behavior towards a third party. We first asked whether donor children would show higher levels of generosity towards an affectionate than a non-affectionate recipient (condition 1), and a generous than a non-generous recipient (condition 2), before pitting the two forms of recipient kindness directly against each other (condition 3). Last, we asked whether donations to generous recipients would decrease if the recipient simultaneously displayed non-kind behavior through a lack of affection (condition 4). Here we show that children allocated a greater share of the available resource to generous and affectionate recipients than non-generous and non-affectionate recipients respectively. However, when asked to divide resources between a generous and an affectionate recipient, or two recipients who had each displayed a combination of kind and non-kind behavior, children allocated each recipient an equal share of the resource. These findings suggest that children donate selectively based on previous information regarding recipient generosity and affection, however when both forms of kindness are pitted directly against each other, children strive for equality, suggesting that kindness engenders donor generosity irrespective of the form of kindness previously displayed.
... Although there were no age-related differences in behavior, we found quadratic age associations in the neural correlates under-lying costly prosocial decisions, which peaked in early adolescence relative to childhood and mid-adolescence. The frequency and MRT of costly prosocial decisions did not differ by age in the current study, which is consistent with prior experimental research on costly vs non-costly prosocial behavior in youth (Gummerum et al., 2008;Güroglu et al., 2009;Güroglu et al., 2014a). Despite similar rates of costly prosocial behavior across age, early adolescents make prosocial decisions differently than children and late adolescents, as evidenced by greater recruitment of the pSTS, temporal pole and IFG when engaging in costly prosocial behavior. ...
The transition from childhood to adolescence is marked by increasingly sophisticated social cognitive abilities that are paralleled by significant functional maturation of the brain. However, the role of social and neurobiological development in facilitating age differences in prosocial behavior remains unclear. Using a cross-sectional sample of children and adolescents (n = 51; 8–16 years), we examined the age-related correlates of prosocial behavior. Youth made costly and non-costly prosocial decisions to anonymous peers during a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan. Among a subsample of youth who made prosocial decisions (n = 35), we found quadratic age differences in neural activation that peaked in early adolescence relative to childhood and older adolescence. In particular, early adolescents showed heightened recruitment of the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), temporal pole and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) when engaging in costly prosocial behavior at the expense of gaining a reward, whereas they evoked heightened pSTS and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex/IFG activation when engaging in costly vs non-costly forms of prosocial behavior. Given that we did not find age differences in prosocial behavior, this suggests that early adolescents show unique patterns of brain activation to inform similar levels of prosocial behavior.
... Although there were no age-related differences in behavior, we found quadratic age associations in the neural correlates under-lying costly prosocial decisions, which peaked in early adolescence relative to childhood and mid-adolescence. The frequency and MRT of costly prosocial decisions did not differ by age in the current study, which is consistent with prior experimental research on costly vs non-costly prosocial behavior in youth (Gummerum et al., 2008;Güroglu et al., 2009;Güroglu et al., 2014a). Despite similar rates of costly prosocial behavior across age, early adolescents make prosocial decisions differently than children and late adolescents, as evidenced by greater recruitment of the pSTS, temporal pole and IFG when engaging in costly prosocial behavior. ...
The transition from childhood to adolescence is marked by increasingly sophisticated social cognitive abilities that are paralleled by significant functional maturation of the brain. However, the role of social and neurobiological development in facilitating age differences in prosocial behavior remains unclear. Using a cross-sectional sample of children and adolescents (n = 51; 8–16 years), we examined the age-related correlates of prosocial behavior. Youth made costly and non-costly prosocial decisions to anonymous peers during a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan. Among a subsample of youth who made prosocial decisions (n = 35), we found quadratic age differences in neural activation that peaked in early adolescence relative to childhood and older adolescence. In particular, early adolescents showed heightened recruitment of the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), temporal pole and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) when engaging in costly prosocial behavior at the expense of gaining a reward, whereas they evoked heightened pSTS and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex/IFG activation when engaging in costly vs non-costly forms of prosocial behavior. Given that we did not find age differences in prosocial behavior, this suggests that early adolescents show unique patterns of brain activation to inform similar levels of prosocial behavior.
... 4,13-15 ); and (iii) social negotiations and exchanges, often in the context of economic games (e.g. [16][17][18] ). ...
Group decision-making is required in early life in educational settings and central to a well-functioning society. However, there is little research on group decision-making in adolescence, despite the significant neuro-cognitive changes during this period. Researchers have studied adolescent decision-making in ‘static’ social contexts, such as risk-taking in the presence of peers, and largely deemed adolescent decision-making ‘sub-optimal’. It is not clear whether these findings generalise to more dynamic social contexts, such as the discussions required to reach a group decision. Here we test the optimality of group decision-making at different stages of adolescence. Pairs of male pre-to-early adolescents (8 to 13 years of age) and mid-to-late adolescents (14 to 17 years of age) together performed a low-level, perceptual decision-making task. Whenever their individual decisions differed, they were required to negotiate a joint decision. While there were developmental differences in individual performance, the joint performance of both adolescent groups was at adult levels (data obtained from a previous study). Both adolescent groups achieved a level of joint performance expected under optimal integration of their individual information into a joint decision. Young adolescents’ joint, but not individual, performance deteriorated over time. The results are consistent with recent findings attesting to the competencies, rather than the shortcomings, of adolescent social behaviour.
... 4,13-15 ); and (iii) social negotiations and exchanges, often in the context of economic games (e.g. [16][17][18] ). ...
Group decision-making is required in early life in educational settings and central to a well-functioning society. However, there is little research on group decision-making in adolescence, despite the significant neuro-cognitive changes during this period. Researchers have studied adolescent decision-making in ‘static’ social contexts, such as risk-taking in the presence of peers, and largely deemed adolescent decision-making ‘sub-optimal’. It is not clear whether these findings generalise to more dynamic social contexts, such as the discussions required to reach a group decision. Here we test the optimality of group decision-making at different stages of adolescence. Pairs of male pre-to-early adolescents (8 to 13 years of age) and mid-to-late adolescents (14 to 17 years of age) together performed a low-level, perceptual decision-making task. Whenever their individual decisions differed, they were required to negotiate a joint decision. While there were developmental differences in individual performance, the joint performance of both adolescent groups was at adult levels (data obtained from a previous study). Both adolescent groups achieved a level of joint performance expected under optimal integration of their individual information into a joint decision. Young adolescents’ joint, but not individual, performance deteriorated over time. The results are consistent with recent findings attesting to the competencies, rather than the shortcomings, of adolescent social behaviour.
... Research on social decision-making in adolescence has largely pursued three avenues: i) individual learning in social contexts (i.e., "collaborative learning"; e.g., 11,12 ), ii) decisionmaking, and in particular risk-taking, in the presence of peers (e.g., 4,13,14,15 ); and iii) social negotiations and exchanges, often in the context of economic games (e.g., 16,17,18 ). ...
Group decision-making is required in early life in educational settings and central to a well-functioning society. However, there is little research on group decision-making in adolescence, despite the significant neuro-cognitive changes during this period. Researchers have studied adolescent decision-making in 'static' social contexts, such as risk-taking in the presence of peers, and largely deemed adolescent decision-making 'sub-optimal'. It is not clear whether these findings generalise to more dynamic social contexts, such as the discussions required to reach a group decision. Here we test the optimality of group decision-making at different stages of adolescence. Pairs of male pre-to-early adolescents (8 to 13 years of age) and mid-to-late adolescents (14 to 17 years of age) together performed a low-level, perceptual decision-making task. Whenever their individual decisions differed, they were required to negotiate a joint decision. While there were developmental differences in individual performance, the joint performance of both adolescent groups was at adult levels (data obtained from a previous study). Both adolescent groups achieved a level of joint performance expected under optimal integration of their individual information into a joint decision. Young adolescents' joint, but not individual, performance deteriorated over time. The results are consistent with recent findings attesting to the competencies, rather than the shortcomings, of adolescent social behaviour.
... Recently, research in psychology has suggested that people with ASD present abnormal fairness-related behavior compared with non-ASD counterparts and has also related this phenomenon to theory of mind (ToM) and EF. The ability to ToM, that is, to attribute mental states such as beliefs, desires, feelings, and intentions to others, is critical; it affects individuals' social decisionmaking (Frith and Singer, 2008) and is a necessary condition for demonstrating fairness in an economic game (Gummerum et al., 2008). Individuals with ASD have a fundamental difficulty metalizing, and social life for them is a series of strong headwinds, uncertain tacks, and treacherous eddies (Sally and Hill, 2006). ...
Background:
Existing research typically focuses on only one domain of cognition with regard to fairness-theory of mind or executive function. However, children with High-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HF-ASD) are cognitively impaired in both domains. Moreover, little is known about fairness characteristics in children with HF-ASD in relation to both domains of cognition.
Methods:
Thirty children with HF-ASD as well as 39 children with typical development (TD) were evaluated in this study. We investigated the development of children's fairness characteristics as a responder in a mini ultimatum game (UG). The different 'brain types,' i.e., with or without HF-ASD, were evaluated using the Empathy Questionnaire-Systemizing Questionnaire (E/SC-Q). Furthermore, we explored the relationship between fairness and brain types using Pearson correlation analyses.
Results:
Children in the HF-ASD group were more likely to accept unfair offers than were children in the TD group (χ2 = 17.513, p = .025). In the HF-ASD group, the acceptance rate of unfair offers was correlated with the discrepancy score (r = 0.363, p = .048), while there were no significant correlations in the TD group. In HF-ASD group, compared with Type S, acceptance rate of unfair offer was significant higher in Extreme Type S 'brain type' (F = 28.584, p < .001). While dividing TD participants by 'brain type', there was no significant difference in acceptance rate of unfair offer among five difference 'brain types' (F = 1.131, p = .358). Stepwise regression revealed that Extreme Type S positively predicted acceptance of unfair offers (F [1, 68] = 8.695, p < .001).
Discussion:
Our findings show that children with HF-ASD were more likely to accept an unfair offer; in particular, the more unbalanced the development of empathy and systemizing was, the more significant the unfairness preference observed. Extreme Type S positively predicted the acceptance of unfair offers by children with HF-ASD.
... From an early age, children cooperate spontaneously with adults and peers (Brownell, Ramani, & Zerwas, 2006;Warneken & Tomasello, 2007) and identify social norms as well as norm violations (Rakoczy & Schmidt, 2013). From 3 to 8 years of age, they become increasingly egalitarian, sharing approximately equal amounts of resources or rejecting unequal ones, particularly from the age of 5 (Benenson, Pascoe, & Radmore, 2007;Fehr, Bernhard, & Rockenbach, 2008;Gummerum, Hanoch, Keller, Parsons, & Hummel, 2010;Gummerum, Keller, Takezawa, & Mata, 2008;Harbaugh & Krause, 2000;Leimgruber, Shaw, Santos, & Olson, 2012). It is also around the age of 5 that children begin to show concern with their own reputation, being more generous when their decision is not anonymous, that is, when they are observed by an experimenter or an in-group member (Engelmann, Herrmann, & Tomasello, 2016;Engelmann, Over, Herrmann, & Tomasello, 2013;Fujii, Takagishi, Koizumi, & Okada, 2015) or when the recipients of their donations are fully aware of their decisions (Leimgruber et al., 2012). ...
In cooperative situations, individual interests can be in conflict with those of the group, creating a social dilemma in which one must choose whether to cooperate or not. Sensitivity to social stimuli is an important factor influencing cooperative behavior in such dilemmas. The current study investigated the influence of verbal feedback and vigilance by adults on children's donating behavior in a public goods game. The participants were 739 public school children, between 5 and 12 years of age, who were divided into 34 groups. Each group was assigned to one of four experimental conditions: control, positive feedback (praise), negative feedback (criticism), or vigilance. Participants then played eight rounds of the game. The children's donations were greater in the feedback and vigilance conditions, but the effects were mediated by age and rounds. The results are most likely related to concerns about reputation, which tend to become stronger with age. Older children are better at self-presentation and understanding social norms. Thus, compared with younger children, they seemed more concerned with appearing to be generous, but only when they could get credit for it. Nevertheless, children's donations still decreased across the rounds. Although adult vigilance and feedback influence children's cooperation among peers, other mechanisms are necessary to stabilize their behavior over time.
... On the one hand, Côté, Tremblay, Nagin, Zoccolillo, and Vitaro (2002) found support for in- terindividual stability in pro-social behavior. Similarly, Gummerum, Keller, Takezawa, and Mata (2008) did not find significant age effects on individual allocations in a dictator game. On the other hand, there is also evidence that young school children sometimes act less selfishly. ...
We propose a method to quantify other-regarding preferences in group decisions. Our method is based on revealed preference theory. It measures willingness-to-pay for others' consumption and willingness-to-pay for equality in consumption by evaluating consumption externalities in monetary terms. We introduce an altruism parameter and an inequality aversion parameter. Each parameter defines a continuum of models characterized by varying degrees of externalities. We study the empirical performance of our method through a simulation analysis, in which we also investigate the impact of measurement error and increased sample size. Finally, we use our method to analyze decisions made by dyads of children in an experimental setting. We find that children's decisions are particularly characterized by varying levels of altruism. We relate this heterogeneity across children to age, gender, and the degree of friendship in dyads.
... As such, the behaviour becomes less common among children. Researchers have examined sharing behaviour through use of the dictator game (Gummerum, Keller, Takezawa, & Mata, 2008 adapted from Kahneman, Knetsch, & Thaler, 1986). In this game, children are provided with a choice to either share their monetary resources with an anonymous other, or keep their resources for themselves. ...
... Although Olson and Spelke (2008;Warneken, Lohse, Melis, & Tomasello, 2011) found that preschool children are already sensitive to fairness and able to share equally, others suggested that sharing does not follow equality norms before 5-7 years of age (Benenson, Pascoe, & Radmore, 2007;Fehr, Bernhard, & Rockenbach, 2008). Furthermore, in some studies, older children, adolescents, and young adults shared more in dictator games than preschoolers (e.g., Benenson et al., 2007;Harbaugh et al., 2000;Malti, Gummerum, Keller, Chaparro, & Buchmann, 2012), but others found no developmental differences in sharing between 9-and 17-year-olds (e.g., Gummerum, Keller, Takezawa, & Mata, 2008) or a decrease in sharing between 8-and 12-year-olds . Thus, there seems to be no clear linear developmental trend in sharing decisions between childhood and adolescence. ...
This study explores how the age (adult vs. peer) and the suggestion (to be fair vs. unfair) of models affect the sharing decisions of 9- and 12-year-olds (N = 365) from Italy and Singapore. Results demonstrate a developmental shift in the influence of models on children's and adolescents’ sharing decisions in both cultures: Children's decisions were more affected by an adult model's suggestion than by that of a peer model, whereas the opposite was true for adolescents. Regardless of the models’ influence, participants considered equal sharing to be the fair choice and reported being happier when their sharing decisions were generous. Our results highlight the crucial importance of social and developmental factors for the promotion of fairness judgments and emotions.
... Bicchieri, 2006;Castelli et al., 2014), by having children playing the games with an anonymous partner (both as proposers and responders) we intended to control for social contextual elements that are known to affect bargaining behaviour. These include physical appearance: attractive people receive higher offers (Solnick and Schweitzer, 1999); the proclivity to make prosocial decisions, which is related to in-group preferences (Fehr et al., 2008;Takezawa et al., 2006;Gummerum et al., 2008;Leman et al., 2009); parochialism, i.e. favouring the members of one's own social group (Fehr et al., 2008), just to cite a few. ...
In this study, we seek to widen our understanding of the developmental processes underlying bargaining behaviour in children addressing the concept of prospective thinking. We argue that the emergence of the capacity to think prospectively about future outcomes or behaviours in response to current actions is a required precedent to strategic decision making. To test this idea, we compared 6, 8 and 10 years old children’s performance on three tasks: the ultimatum game assessing fairness/inequality aversion, the marshmallow task, an intertemporal choice task evaluating the ability to delay gratification, and the dictator game assessing altruism. The children’s socio-demographic and cognitive variables were also evaluated. We hypothesized that development of strategic thinking in the ultimatum game is related to an increased ability to delay gratification − given that both tasks require looking at prospective benefits − and, crucially, not to altruism, which benefits from immediate selfless reward. Our results confirmed our hypothesis suggesting that increased strategic planning with age would also stem from the development of competencies like prospective thinking.
... Harbaugh, Krause, and Liday (2003) found older children (9to 14-year-olds) proposed higher offers to their anonymous classmates than younger children (7year-olds) in ultimatum games. However, other studies did not find developmental differences in sharing behavior across childhood and adolescence (Gummerum, Keller, Takezawa, & Mata, 2008;G€ uro glu, van den Bos, & Crone, 2009;Zhu, Huangfu, Mou, & Chen, 2008), whereas some even found older children were less likely to engage in egalitarian sharing than younger children (House, Henrich, Brosnan, & Silk, 2012). Thus, the developmental patterns of children's sharing behavior remain unclear. ...
This study investigated the motivational and social-cognitive foundations (i.e., inequality aversion, in-group bias, and theory of mind) that underlie the development of sharing behavior among 3- to 9-year-old Chinese children (N = 122). Each child played two mini-dictator games against an in-group member (friend) and an out-group member (stranger) to divide four stickers. Results indicated that there was a small to moderate age-related increase in children's egalitarian sharing with strangers, whereas the age effect was moderate to large in interactions with friends. Moreover, 3- to 4-year-olds did not treat strangers and friends differently, but 5- to 6-year-old and older children showed strong in-group favoritism. Finally, theory of mind was an essential prerequisite for children's sharing behavior toward strangers, but not a unique predictor of their sharing with friends. © 2016 The Authors. Child Development
Sensitivity to linguistic cues, in theory, can change the interpretation of social and game theoretical behavior. We tested this in a pair of experiments with children aged 4 and 5 years. Children were asked to give some, keep some, or put some stickers for themselves or for another player (a puppet) after collaborative activities. We found that the direction of the verb did influence how selfish the younger children were. We also had children tidy up the toys after each activity to determine their interpretation of some. Children could derive the pragmatic scalar implicature linked to some (i.e., interpreting it as meaning not all), and they did so particularly when it affected them personally. These findings have important implications for the stability of other-regarding preferences and the importance of instructions in games.
Adequate social functioning during childhood requires context-appropriate social decision-making. To make such decisions, children rely on their social norms, conceptualized as cognitive models of shared expectations. Since social norms are dynamic, children must adapt their models of shared expectations and modify their behavior in line with their social environment. This study aimed to investigate children’s abilities to use social information to adapt their fairness norm and to identify the computational mechanism governing this process. Thirty children (7–11 years, M = 7.9 SD = 0.85, 11 girls) played the role of Responder in a modified version of the Ultimatum Game–a two-player game based on the fairness norm–in which they had to choose to accept or reject offers from different Proposers. Norm adaptation was assessed by comparing rejection rates before and after a conditioning block in which children received several low offers. Computational models were compared to test which best explains children’s behavior during the game. Mean rejection rate decreased significantly after receiving several low offers suggesting that children have the ability to dynamically update their fairness norm and adapt to changing social environments. Model-based analyses suggest that this process involves the computation of norm-prediction errors. This is the first study on norm adaptation capacities in school-aged children that uses a computational approach. Children use implicit social information to adapt their fairness norm to changing environments and this process appears to be supported by a computational mechanism in which norm-prediction errors are used to update norms.
The field of moral identity research comprises two different views as to when moral identity emerges in the course of development. While some describe moral identity as a developmental achievement of middle childhood, others maintain that it does not emerge before adolescence or early adulthood. The present paper bridges these views by introducing a new theoretical framework for conceptualizing moral identity development. Within this framework, moral identity is conceptualized as a goal, namely the goal to be a moral person. Children, adolescents and adults are all assumed to have this moral identity goal. Yet, its goal characteristics are expected to systematically change with development: from concrete to abstract, from externally to internally motivated, and from prevention- to promotion-oriented. From the age of responsibility to adult maturity, important changes are proposed in how the moral identity goal is represented and how it motivates moral action. By outlining these changes, the paper links early- and late-onset views of moral identity development and identifies avenues for future empirical research.
Negotiation occurs whenever people cannot achieve their own goals without the cooperation of others. What is the evolution of negotiations? What is the history? What are the characteristics? What are the types? How can negotiations be managed?
In the present research, the Biblical verses concerning the negotiations are described. Therefore, this research deals with various medical aspects of the negotiations.
Negotiations are a complex phenomenon. The negations play an essential role in many facets of human life including psychological, social, and somatic functioning.
This Research shows that the awareness of the negotiations has accompanied human during the long years of our existence.
Fairness can be affected by personality traits, situational factors, and person-situation interactions. Based on studies with adult samples, the present study investigated elementary school children’s (N = 164) social behavior in versions of the Dictator and the Ultimatum Game with actual incentives. Importantly, the Ultimatum, but not the Dictator Game includes the fear of retaliation for unfair allocation offers. The results show predictive power of the situation and the personality dimension Honesty-Humility, but not their interaction. Children offered more candies in the Ultimatum Game than in the Dictator Game, and, in general, children higher in Honesty-Humility offered more candies than children lower in Honesty-Humility.
Are potential contributors more likely to support a prosocial cause when presented with few contribution options or with many options? Across four studies—an analysis of archival contribution data from the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, a field experiment conducted in cooperation with a grocery store and a snack bar company, and two controlled laboratory experiments—we consistently find that when a fundraiser offers more options to potential contributors, the likelihood of contribution initially decreases and then increases. The result is a U-shaped relationship between the number of contribution options and contribution likelihood. We do not find such an effect for non-prosocial choices. With a fifth study, we offer a preliminary and tentative theoretical explanation for the U-shaped relationship, suggesting that the type of information processing by the decision maker (intuitive rather than deliberate) underlies this effect.
This study was designed to investigate the impact of self-relevance between preschool children and recipients on children’s sharing behavior in dictator games using a forced-choice resource distribution paradigm. Experiment 1: A total of 75 children aged 3–6 years were evaluated in a first-party situation in which they were distributed as recipients and dictators and shared resources with distracting recipients with different extents of self-relevance under three different payoff structures, including non-costly, costly, and envy structures. Children could choose between a sharing option and a non-sharing option. The results showed that, in a first-party situation, children aged 3–6 years old typically share more resources with highly self-relevant recipients (friends) than with moderately self-relevant recipients (acquaintances) and lowly self-relevant recipients (strangers) and that they share more resources with moderately self-relevant recipients (acquaintances) than lowly self-relevant recipients (strangers). Experiment 2: A total of 62 children aged 3–6 years old were evaluated in a third-party situation in which they were distributed not as recipients but only dictators, making decisions between the options of sharing more or sharing less with distracting recipients who had different extents of self-relevance under three different payoff structures, such as non-bias, high self-bias, and low self-bias. The results showed that, in a third-party situation, children typically share in a similar manner to that of Experiment 1, meaning that children display selective generosity and that the self-relevance between the children and recipients played a key role. Across age groups, this study of preschool children (total N = 137) demonstrates a degree of effect of self-relevance on preschool children’s sharing in first-party and third-party situations, with highly self-relevant recipients receiving a more preferential share in the dictator game than those with low self-relevance, although this effect was stronger in the older preschool children.
Adults expect distributive justice – that rewards are distributed according to the principles of equality and equity. Previous research has demonstrated that preschool-aged children are sensitive to distributive justice, yet the age at which these sensitivities emerge remains unknown. The present research demonstrates that 17-month-old infants (N = 84) expect individuals to distribute shared resources based on the amount of work each partner contributed to attain the resources. These findings provide evidence that a sensitivity to two principles of distributive justice, equity and equality, emerges much earlier than has previously been suggested.
Several studies have shown that children struggle to give what they believe that they should: the so-called knowledge-behavior gap. Over a dozen recent Dictator Game studies find that, although young children believe that they should give half of a set of resources to a peer, they typically give less and often keep all of the resources for themselves. This article reviews recent evidence for five potential explanations for the gap and how children close it with age: self-regulation, social distance, theory of mind, moral knowledge and social learning. I conclude that self-regulation, social distance, and social learning show the most promising evidence for understanding the mechanisms that can close the gap.
People vary considerably in moral reasoning. According to Kohlberg’s theory, individuals who reach the highest level of post-conventional moral reasoning judge moral issues based on deeper principles and shared ideals rather than self-interest or adherence to laws and rules. Recent research has suggested the involvement of the brain’s frontostriatal reward system in moral judgments and prosocial behaviors. However, it remains unknown whether moral reasoning level is associated with differences in reward system function. Here, we combined arterial spin labeling perfusion and blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging and measured frontostriatal reward system activity both at rest and during a sequential risky decision making task in a sample of 64 participants at different levels of moral reasoning. Compared to individuals at the pre-conventional and conventional level of moral reasoning, post-conventional individuals showed increased resting cerebral blood flow in the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Cerebral blood flow in these brain regions correlated with the degree of post-conventional thinking across groups. Post-conventional individuals also showed greater task-induced activation in the ventral striatum during risky decision making. These findings suggest that high-level post-conventional moral reasoning is associated with increased activity in the brain’s frontostriatal system, regardless of task-dependent or task-independent states.
We propose a method to quantify the willingness-to-pay for the consumption of others in group decisions. Our method is based on revealed preference theory. It measures willingness-to-pay for others' consumption by evaluating positive consumption externalities in monetary terms. Within the framework of cooperative (i.e. Pareto efficient) consumption behavior, we introduce a selfishness parameter that defines a continuum of models that are characterized by varying degrees of consumption externalities. We use our method to analyze decisions made by dyads of children in an experimental consumption setting. We find that children's consumption decisions are systematically characterized by externalities (i.e. non-selfish). But we also observe that there is substantial heterogeneity across children, which we can relate to differences in age, gender and degree of friendship between dyad members.
Research on moral judgment has been dominated by rationalist models, in which moral judgment is thought to be caused by moral reasoning. The author gives 4 reasons for considering the hypothesis that moral reasoning does not cause moral judgment; rather, moral reasoning is usually a post hoc construction, generated after a judgment has been reached. The social intuitionist model is presented as an alternative to rationalist models. The model is a social model in that it deemphasizes the private reasoning done by individuals and emphasizes instead the importance of social and cultural influences. The model is an intuitionist model in that it states that moral judgment is generally the result of quick, automatic evaluations (intuitions). The model is more consistent than rationalist models with recent findings in social, cultural, evolutionary, and biological psychology, as well as in anthropology and primatology.
Models indicate that opportunities for reputation formation can play an important role in sustaining cooperation and prosocial behavior. Results from experimental economic games support this conclusion, as manipulating reputational opportunities affects prosocial behavior. Noting that some prosocial behavior remains even in anonymous noniterated games, some investigators argue that humans possess a propensity for prosociality independent of reputation management. However, decision-making processes often employ both explicit propositional knowledge and intuitive or affective judgments elicited by tacit cues. Manipulating game parameters alters explicit information employed in overt strategizing but leaves intact cues that may affect intuitive judgments relevant to reputation formation. To explore how subtle cues of observability impact prosocial behavior, we conducted five dictator games, manipulating both auditory cues of the presence of others (via the use of sound-deadening earmuffs) and visual cues (via the presentation of stylized eyespots). Although earmuffs appeared to reduce generosity, this effect was not significant. However, as predicted, eyespots substantially increased generosity, despite no differences in actual anonymity; when using a computer displaying eyespots, almost twice as many participants gave money to their partners compared with the controls. Investigations of prosocial behavior must consider both overt information about game parameters and subtle cues influencing intuitive judgments.
A selective review of research highlights the emerging view of groups as information processors. In this review, the authors include research on processing objectives, attention, encoding, storage, retrieval, processing response, feedback, and learning in small interacting task groups. The groups as information processors perspective underscores several characteristic dimensions of variability in group performance of cognitive tasks, namely, commonality—uniqueness of information, convergence–diversity of ideas, accentuation–attenuation of cognitive processes, and belongingness–distinctiveness of members. A combination of contributions framework provides an additional conceptualization of information processing in groups. The authors also address implications, caveats, and questions for future research and theory regarding groups as information processors.
The purpose of this study is to test Davis’s (1996) Social Judgment Scheme (SJS) model, which was proposed as a predictive model of group decision making with continuous alternatives. The SJS model assumes that individual group members’ influence on the group decision exponentially declines with the distance from other members’ judgments (i.e. majority influence process). Fifty-five 3-person groups engaged in eight group polarization tasks. First, the model fits of the SJS model and the Averaging model were compared in terms of the predictive accuracy. Results indicted that the SJS model yielded accurate predictions more often than the Averaging model. Second, a different analytical approach confirmed the model’s corollary—the skewness of individual judgments distribution was negatively correlated with the direction of group polarization. These findings support the model’s assumption of majority influence process in continuous alternatives tasks.
This article presents the results of a longitudinal study of 80 subjects between the ages of 3 and 8 years old to determine their conceptions of money and its value. The research was conducted within the framework of Piagetian theory using the "critical method." A test was given and subsequently repeated after an interval of 12 months. The results demonstrate that the development of the notions under investigation proceeds in 6 definable stages.
Proposes a general theory (social decision scheme theory) for many kinds of group decision-making and illustrates some special case models with a variety of data from several experimental situations. While focusing upon the traditional issue of individual-group differences, the theory is aimed at accounting for the distribution of group decisions by using formal hypotheses about the effects of social interaction when the inputs to discussion are individual member preferences. The basic assumptions underlying the model are similar in several respects to proposals by F. Restle and J. H. Davis (see record
1963-06168-001) and I. D. Steiner (see record
1966-10588-001) in group problem-solving research. The model itself represents the general case of earlier theoretical notions by W. H. Smoke and R. B. Zajonc; Davis, Hoppe, and Hornseth (see record
1968-09967-001); and Zajonc, Wolosin, and Wolosin in group decision making. In addition, several nonintuitive consequences of group decision making, assuming some form of the model, are discussed. (41 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Discusses conceptual and empirical issues concerning the relations between moral reasoning and moral action. Two opposite views of the relations between moral cognition and moral action are described; one is an essentially irrational view that emphasizes need and action tendencies, while the other considers moral functioning as essentially rational. Their contrasting assumptions and implications are clarified. Available empirical literature is reviewed; research relating moral reasoning to delinquency, honesty, altruism, conformity, and other real-life moral behaviors is summarized, with special attention given to problems of design, measurement, and interpretation. Although overall these studies seem to support the cognitive–developmental perspective, this support needs to be qualified and interpreted in each area. At a more general level, the importance of clarifying the meaning of consistency between moral cognition and moral action and the need for a process approach to research in this area are emphasized. (4 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Six-person mock civil juries awarded significantly larger amounts for damages than did 12-person juries, and individuals preferred even larger average awards. A reversal of the "deep-pockets bias" observed earlier, an explanation involving temporal fluctuation in normative standards, during the time interval between the studies, was supported by independent data showing temporal trends in actual civil trial awards. A computational model of consensus that assumed a strong majority of those members with the most similar (closest) personal preferences decided on the median of their preferences accurately predicted award magnitude. Computer simulations explored the effects of critical faction size (majority, etc.) and location within the group, features that might in turn depend on task environment, cultural dynamics, and social context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Tested the authors' (1979) model that outlines how moral discussion promotes moral stage development. Developmentally effective discussion is termed "transactive discussion" and consists of an interpenetration of reasoning by discussants. The present study with 60 undergraduates offers evidence of the validity of the relationship of such discussion in same-sex dyads to significant pre- to posttest moral stage development as measured by L. Kohlberg's (1976) stage scheme. Ss participated in 5 discussions, 4 involving moral dilemmas. The dialogs were then coded. Transactive discussion was the single best predictor of stage change and shared almost no variance with the only other significant predictor, stage disparity between dyad partners. Furthermore, the theoretically higher-order types of transactive discussion accounted for most of the relationship between transactive discussion and stage development. It is concluded that more attention should be paid to the developmentally relevant process of moral discussion, especially transactive behavior. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A number of studies indicate that preadolescents allocate more rewards to those who have done more work. J. S. Adams's (1965) equity theory is most often used to explain this finding. One assumption of equity theory is that persons compute ratios and compare them for proportionality. However, research on logico-mathematical development indicates that children do not solve problems of proportionality until they are 11–25 yrs old. This suggests that equity theory may not be an adequate explanation of how children allocate rewards in experiments on equity. Children's allocation behaviors do change with age, from the possibly self-interested or equal allocations of children under 6 yrs, to the descriptive ordinal equity allocations of 6–22-yr-olds, to the possibly proportional allocations of persons 13 yrs and older. This sequence is consistent with the normal sequence of logico-mathematical development, suggesting that observed allocation behaviors may be a function of cognitive ability as well as manipulated situational variables. (77 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Studied self-concept development from childhood to adolescence from a cognitive-structural perspective. The responses of 136 males and 126 females from Grades 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 to the question "Who am I?", and to the Twenty Statements Test were analyzed by means of a 30-category scoring system. Results indicate that between childhood and adolescence, there was a significant increase in self-conceptions categorized as follows: occupational role; existential, individuating; ideological and belief references; sense of self-determination; sense of unity; interpersonal style; and psychic style. A significant decrease occurred for self-conceptions based on (a) territoriality, citizenship; (b) possessions, resources; and (c) physical self, body image. Curvilinear age changes were found for the use of the categories sex; name; kinship role; membership in an abstract category; and judgments, tastes, likes. The results for self-concept development are in general agreement with H. Werner's (1957) notion that cognitive development proceeds from a concrete to an abstract mode of representation. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Peer discussion of moral disagreements can be analyzed to reveal processes of moral reasoning growth.
Mentalising is assumed to be involved in decision-making that is necessary to social interaction. We investigated the relationship between mentalising and three types of strategic games – Prisoners’ Dilemma, Dictator and Ultimatum – in children with and without autistic spectrum disorders. Overall, the results revealed less dramatic differences than expected among the normally developing age groups and the children with autism, suggesting that in these laboratory tasks, mentalising skills are not always necessary. There were, nonetheless, some important findings. Young children were more cautious about initiating cooperation than their older peers and, in bargaining situations, they were less generous in their opening unilateral grants and over-solicitous of an empowered receiver. Participants with autism did have a harder time shifting strategy between versions of the Prisoners’ Dilemma, and they were much more likely to accept low initial offers in the Ultimatum game and to refuse fair proposals. In addition, participants’ measured mentalising abilities explain intentional and strategic behaviour within the prisoners’ dilemma and the avoidance of unsuccessful ultimatum proposals.
The financial crisis of 2008, which started with an initially well-defined epicenter focused on mortgage backed securities (MBS), has been cascading into a global economic recession, whose increasing severity and uncertain duration has led and is continuing to lead to massive losses and damage for billions of people. Heavy central bank interventions and government spending programs have been launched worldwide and especially in the USA and Europe, with the hope to unfreeze credit and boltster consumption. Here, we present evidence and articulate a general framework that allows one to diagnose the fundamental cause of the unfolding financial and economic crisis: the accumulation of several bubbles and their interplay and mutual reinforcement has led to an illusion of a ``perpetual money machine'' allowing financial institutions to extract wealth from an unsustainable artificial process. Taking stock of this diagnostic, we conclude that many of the interventions to address the so-called liquidity crisis and to encourage more consumption are ill-advised and even dangerous, given that precautionary reserves were not accumulated in the ``good times'' but that huge liabilities were. The most ``interesting'' present times constitute unique opportunities but also great challenges, for which we offer a few recommendations.
A selective review of research highlights the emerging view of groups as information processors. In this review, the authors include research on processing objectives, attention, encoding, storage, retrieval, processing, response, feedback, and learning in small interacting task groups. The groups as information processors perspective underscores several characteristic dimensions of variability in group performance of cognitive tasks, namely, commonality-uniqueness of information, convergence-diversity of ideas, accentuation-attenuation of cognitive processes, and belongingness-distinctiveness of members. A combination of contributions framework provides an additional conceptualization of information processing in groups. The authors also address implications, caveats, and questions for future research and theory regarding groups as information processors.
This longitudinal research examined a structural model of the self-regulatory mechanisms governing transgressive conduct. Perceived academic and self-regulatory efficacy concurrently and longitudinally deterred transgressiveness both directly and by fostering prosocialness and adherence to moral self-sanctions for harmful conduct. The impact of perceived social self-efficacy was mediated through prosocialness. Moral disengagement and prosocialness affected transgressiveness through the mediating influence of irascible affectivity and hostile rumination. Ruminative affectivity, in turn, both concurrently and longitudinally affected transgressiveness. Moral disengagement also contributed independently to variance in transgressiveness over time. This pattern of relations was obtained after controlling for prior transgressiveness. The structural model was replicated across gender and provided a better fit to the data than did several alternative models.
This paper introduces the team dictator game to study whether social dynamics within a group can cause groups' decisions to differ systematically from individuals' decisions. In the individual dictator game, a subject dictates the allocation of y dollars; in the team dictator game, a team of two subjects dictates the allocation of 2y dollars. We derive and test competing predictions for the two dominant psychological theories of group polarisation in this context. The data indicate that team choices tend to be dominated by the more other-regarding member. This result is more consistent with Social Comparison Theory than Persuasive Argument Theory.
To provide data on middle-class mothers' and fathers' conceptions of their child-rearing roles during adolescence, parents of 5th, 8th, and 11th graders were interviewed in their homes. Forty-two families (an equal number of boys and girls at each grade level) participated. Parents described the behaviors that they were currently encouraging or discouraging in their child, as well as the techniques they used to elicit or influence these behaviors. Fathers saw themselves as more actively involved in encouraging instrumental behaviors such as independence and assertiveness, whereas mothers saw themselves as more involved in the training of interpersonal behaviors such as manners and politeness. Fathers reported using more forceful childrearing techniques than did mothers, although parents reported being more punishing and less rewarding with same-sexed children. Parents of girls were more likely to emphasize prosocial behaviors and politeness; parents of boys emphasized selfcare behaviors.
In this paper we introduce and evaluate an integrative model of the development of altruism based on six propositions: (a) social cognition develops in a stage-like, additive-inclusive sequence; (b) forms of thought and behavior are the products of dynamic person-situation interactions; (c) the stages identified by different cognitive-developmental theorists are based on isomorphic structures; (d) structurally isomorphic stages predispose people to corresponding forms of altruism; (e) later developing forms of altruism are more altruistic than earlier developing forms; and (f) the relations between stage-structures and altruism are mediated by cognitive and affective processes that have been linked empirically to prosocial behavior. We derive a hierarchy of altruistic behaviors from the aligned stages of social, ego, and moral development postulated by 10 theorists, compare it to the typologies of altruism derived by other theorists, and adduce evidence supporting the expected relations between the forms of altruism in our hierarchy and (a) age, (b) stage of development, (c) self-attributions of altruism, (d) situational factors, and (e) various cognitive and affective processes.
In a series of experimental studies we have found that intergroup, compared to interindividual behavior, is more competitive and less cooperative (the discontinuity effect). After discussing the generality of this phenomenon, the possible mechanisms mediating the effect are analyzed. The role of fear and greed, in particular, are evaluated against existing empirical evidence. We also present a preliminary study using two n-person expansions of the Prisoner's Dilemma Game, which allow for competition within own-group as well as between groups. The chapter concludes with a consideration of possible ways of reducing discontinuity.
The empirical characteristic function (CF) is the Fourier transform of the sample distribution function. The values of its real and imaginary parts at some real number t are merely sample means of cosine and sine functions of the data, the observations being multiplied by t. Given independent samples from two populations, we develop a test for the two-sample problem which is based on a quadratic form in differences between the respective components of the empirical CFs of the two samples. The power of the CF test compares favorably with that of competing omnibus tests when the data are continuous. In the discrete case the CF procedure is also applicable and quite successful; and in this application it appears to have no competitors.
In order to investigate the relation between the development of justice conceptions and the development of mathematical and physical conceptions, 50 children (10 at each age from 4 through 8) were administered a "positive justice" interview and 5 of Piaget's concrete-operational mathematical and physical tasks. Results indicate that (1) there is a strong association between the level of a child's reasoning about positive justice and the level of his reasoning about mathematical and physical problems; (2) in the great majority of subjects, there was close synchrony (i. e., little segregation) between parallel levels of reasoning in the 2 domains; and (3) there was little evidence in support of the notion that 1 type of reasoning (e. g., mathematical-physical) provides a necessary condition for the development of the other (e. g., justice). An analysis of logical relations between parallel levels in the 2 domains is presented.
examine the concept of equality or equal division as a heuristic that is used to facilitate decision making in situations involving allocation of goods and bads / the kinds of situations that I have in mind involve two or more people who must share resources, responsibilities, or liabilities / the focus . . . is the individual cognitive processes involved when a person must make a decision about how some resource or cost should be allocated / propose that the idea of equality has properties that make it a useful guideline or benchmark in making allocation decisions / it will become obvious that the use of equality as a decision heuristic does not imply that such decisions are simpleminded or uninteresting / on the contrary, they can be quite intricate (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
illustrate the utility of mathematical and computer models for portraying and investigating social-psychological conceptions of group process
group decision making and social influence: strength in numbers / the social combination of disparate opinions and mutual influence: social decision schemes / individual differences / the social transition scheme (STS) model / exploring task, member, and group factors / SIS [social interaction model] / DICE model / DISCUSS model (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Two hundred and ninety-four participants aged between 7 and 17 years of age were asked to share out money between themselves and another, imaginary group. Individual responses were recorded as well as responses after discussion in a group with two other participants. The distribution task took place in two different experimental conditions that either gave participants a free choice about how much to offer to the other group or involved making a strategic offer to avoid the other group rejecting an offer and losing all the money. From 10 years of age onwards, when allowed to choose freely how much to share, boys made progressively less generous offers than girls whereas girls’ offers remained the same with age. However, when inter-group strategic constraints were present, there were few gender differences from 10 years of age. The order in which games were presented was a powerful influence on the offers that participants made.
Using a dictator game, we examine the other-regarding behavior of allocators who are given the responsibility of unilaterally making an allocation decision without consultation on behalf of a two-person group between their group and another group. We then contrast the behavior of the same individuals in an analogous inter-individual situation. We also explore other-regarding perceptions of passive recipients, who are asked to give behavioral forecasts of how they would behave if assigned the allocator role and how they think their allocators would behave. Gender differences are found in both behavior and perceptions. Males are significantly more self-interested and less other-regarding when they are responsible for a group, while females behave similarly under both conditions. Female recipients' forecasts of their own behavior are significantly higher than both their expectations of allocators and the actual female behavior observed in the experiment. Both male and female recipients underestimate the other-regarding behavior of allocators.
This study addressed the polarization among theoretical perspectives in moral psychology regarding the relative significance of parents and peers in children's developing moral maturity. The sample was composed of 60 target children from late childhood and midadolescence, 60 parents, and 60 friends who participated in parent/child and friend/child dyadic discussions of a series of moral conflicts. The quality of parents' and friends' verbal interactions, ego functioning, and level of moral reasoning in these discussions was used to predict the rate of children's moral reasoning development over a 4-year longitudinal interval. Results revealed that interactions with both parents and peers were predictive of children's development but that these two types of relationships influence development in rather different ways. Implications of the findings for the understanding of these socialization agents' roles in moral development are discussed.
Game-theoretic experiments have revealed substantial individual differences where the game allows for off-equilibrium behavior such as trust and reciprocity. We explore the personality psychology and decision making literatures and conclude that these individual differences are likely to be mediated by differential emotional arousal. We argue that Christie and Geis's Machiavellianism scale (Mach-IV) is an instrument that allows the identification of types who vary in cooperativeness. We use that test to predict the behavior of participants in a two-person one-shot constituent game in which subjects face a choice between trust and distrust, and between reciprocation (trustworthiness) and defection. We find that the Mach-IV scale does not predict trusting behavior. It does, however, predict reciprocity. Over one half of those who score low to average on the scale reciprocate trust. High scorers overwhelmingly defect when it is to their advantage to do so.
Schönemann (1979) suggests that Davis' (1973) social decision scheme (SDS) model in general and Davis et al.'s (1977) application of that model in particular suffer from a model identifiability problem. It is argued here that both the general model and its application in Davis et al. (1977) deal adequately with this problem. The basic flaw in Schönemann's reasoning is traced to a failure to recognize the different ways in which the SDS model has been used. We distinguish two common uses of the model: one which can adequately deal with the identifiability problem and the other for which the identifiability problem is not relevant. After discussing these different ways of applying the SDS models, we argue that Schönemann's conclusions are, for the most part, unjustified.
Recent research on ultimatum bargaining, the fact that children often confront and use ultimatums, and theories of developmental psychology all combine to suggest that studying children's ultimatum behavior will be particularly enlightening, both theoretically and with respect to the development of bargaining behavior. The results from two experiments indicate that younger children made larger offers and accepted smaller offers than older participants. Boys took greater strategic advantage of asymmetric information than girls; this dichotomy began with nine-year-olds (third graders) and continued for twelve- and fifteen-year-olds (sixth and ninth graders) as well as for college students. Like adults, children accepted smaller offers when they did not know how much was being divided. Older children required increasingly higher offers, except for college students who were willing to accept considerably less than others. Also, some of the nine-year-olds displayed an extremely strong sense of fairness. The discussion focuses on the development of bargaining strategies and concerns for fairness.
Economic research examining how educational intervention programs affect primary and secondary schooling focuses largely on test scores although the interventions can affect many other outcomes. This paper examines how an educational intervention, a voucher program, affected students' altruism. The voucher program used a lottery to allocate scholarships among low-income applicant families with children in K-8th grade. By exploiting the lottery to identify the voucher effects, and using experimental economic methods, we measure the effects of the intervention on children's altruism. We also measure the voucher program's effects on parents' altruism and several academic outcomes including test scores. We find that the educational intervention positively affects students' altruism towards charitable organizations but not towards their peers. We fail to find statistically significant effects of the vouchers on parents' altruism or test scores.