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Concern for Group Reputation Increases Prosociality in Young Children

Jan M Engelmann1, Esther Herrmann1, Michael Tomasello1,2

  • 11 Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.

Psychological Science
|November 3, 2017
PubMed

Insights

Children aged five share more resources when their group reputation is public. This demonstrates that concern for group reputation encourages prosocial behavior in young children.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Social Psychology
  • Behavioral Economics

Background:

  • Personal reputation significantly influences prosocial behavior.
  • Group identification suggests group reputation may also impact behavior.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if young children's prosocial behavior is affected by their group's reputation.
  • To determine if children share more resources when group reputation is public.

Main Methods:

  • A study involving 5-year-old children.
  • Children's resource sharing was observed under conditions of public vs. private individual and group donations.

Main Results:

  • Children shared significantly more resources when their group's reputation was public compared to private.
  • This effect was observed even when individual donations were obscured by group actions.

Conclusions:

  • Concern for group reputation can enhance prosocial behavior in young children.
  • This provides the first experimental evidence of group reputation influencing generosity in children.

Keywords:
cooperationgroup reputationopen datareputation

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