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Children's developing commitments to joint goals

Katharina Hamann1, Felix Warneken, Michael Tomasello

  • 1Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. khamann@eva.mpg.de

Child Development
|December 17, 2011
PubMed

Insights

Three-and-a-half-year-olds, unlike younger children, show a commitment to joint goals by helping partners even without personal reward. This suggests developing appreciation for collaborative norms in early childhood.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Social Cognition
  • Early Childhood Development

Background:

  • Understanding joint goals is crucial for social development.
  • Previous research has explored cooperation in children, but commitment to shared goals requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate young children's commitment to a joint goal in collaborative activities.
  • To assess if children continue collaboration until all partners receive rewards, even when personal reward is absent.

Main Methods:

  • Forty-eight children, aged 2.5 and 3.5 years, participated in dyadic tasks.
  • An apparatus was used where one child could access rewards early, requiring continued collaboration for the partner's benefit.
  • A noncollaborative control condition was included for comparison.

Main Results:

  • 3.5-year-olds readily assisted their "unlucky" partner, demonstrating commitment to the joint goal.
  • 2.5-year-olds did not show similar collaborative persistence.
  • Assistance was less frequent in the noncollaborative control condition.

Conclusions:

  • Children develop an appreciation for the normative aspects of collaboration around the age of three.
  • This developmental shift indicates an emerging understanding of shared responsibilities in joint activities.

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