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Related Experiment Videos

Enhancing behavioral control increases sharing in children.

Nikolaus Steinbeis1, Harriet Over2

  • 1Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, University of Leiden, 2333 AK Leiden, The Netherlands.

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
|March 15, 2017
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Children aged 6-9 years understand fairness but struggle to share. Enhancing their behavioral control through stories led to more generous sharing, showing its importance in prosocial behavior.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

Background:

  • Young children often understand fairness principles but do not consistently apply them in behavior.
  • A potential factor limiting prosocial behavior, such as sharing, is insufficient behavioral control.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if deficits in behavioral control contribute to lower levels of sharing in children.
  • To experimentally examine the impact of manipulated behavioral control on children's sharing behavior.

Main Methods:

  • A between-participants experimental design involving 120 children aged 6-9 years.
  • Children were exposed to stories designed to either promote or not promote behavioral control.
  • Following the story manipulation, participants completed a sharing task.
Keywords:
Behavioral controlFairnessPrimingProsocial behaviorSharingSocial norms

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Main Results:

  • Children exposed to stories emphasizing behavioral control shared more generously than those in a neutral story condition.
  • This effect of enhanced behavioral control on sharing was consistent across different instructional contexts.
  • Children's perceptions of fairness remained unaffected by the behavioral control manipulation.

Conclusions:

  • Behavioral control plays a significant role in mediating prosocial behavior, specifically sharing, in middle childhood.
  • Interventions aimed at improving behavioral control may enhance children's willingness to share.
  • Findings highlight the dissociation between understanding fairness norms and enacting prosocial behavior.