Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY
Volume 188, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104675
Keywords
Reciprocity; Prosocial behavior; Reputation; Sharing; Partner choice; Cooperation
Funding
- National Science Foundation CAREER award [1760238]
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie [1760238] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Behavioral and Cognitive Sci [1760238] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Adults will offer favors to advance their standing and solicit a favor in return, using ostensibly prosocial acts strategically for selfish ends. Here we assessed the developmental emergence of such strategic behaviors in which individuals are generous to elicit future reciprocation from others. In a novel experimental paradigm with children aged 3 to 7 years, we tested whether children are willing to share more valuable resources when this act could prompt subsequent reciprocation. In an Experimental condition, children could share a more attractive or less attractive resource with a person who they knew would subsequently choose to play a game with either the children or another individual. In the Control condition, children knew the person would play alone. Across two studies, we found that over repeated trials, 5- and 7-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, learned to share more valuable resources in the Experimental condition than in the Control condition. This shows that older age groups were able to quickly learn how to influence the subsequent partner choice in a novel situation. We address theoretical questions about the various types of reciprocity as being supported by different psychological mechanisms and discuss whether the current results could be explained by children's emerging ability for future-directed thinking. (C) 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available