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Giving preschoolers choice increases sharing behavior

Nadia Chernyak1, Tamar Kushnir

  • 1Department of Human Development, Cornell University.

Psychological Science
|August 20, 2013
PubMed

Insights

Children

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Behavioral Economics

Background:

  • Young children exhibit significant prosocial behavior.
  • The underlying mechanisms of early altruism remain incompletely understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of choice in shaping children's altruistic behavior.
  • To test the hypothesis that autonomous, costly choices enhance subsequent prosociality.

Main Methods:

  • Three- and 4-year-old children were assigned to one of three conditions: costly choice, noncostly choice, or no choice.
  • Children made resource allocations to an individual in need under these conditions.
  • Subsequent prosocial behavior was measured by resource allocation to a different individual.

Main Results:

  • While most children shared resources, those who made a costly choice subsequently shared more.
  • Children in the noncostly choice and no-choice conditions showed less subsequent prosociality compared to the costly choice group.

Conclusions:

  • The experience of making autonomous, costly choices appears to foster greater altruistic behavior in young children.
  • This suggests children may infer their own prosociality from the difficulty and autonomy of their choices.

Keywords:
altruismchoicecognitive developmentmoralitypreschoolersprosocial behavior

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