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3- and 5-year-old children's adherence to explicit and implicit joint commitments

Ulrike Kachel1, Michael Tomasello1

  • 1Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology.

Developmental Psychology
|October 26, 2018
PubMed

Insights

Children

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Social Psychology
  • Behavioral Economics

Background:

  • Collaboration involves risks due to temptations to defect.
  • Commitment, both explicit and implicit, can mitigate these risks.
  • Implicit commitment arises from mutual awareness of interdependence.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how commitment levels influence children's defection from collaboration.
  • To examine age-related differences in responding to explicit and implicit commitments.
  • To understand the development of understanding interdependence and obligation.

Main Methods:

  • 192 pairs of 3- and 5-year-old children participated in a collaborative game.
  • Children were bribed to opt out of collaboration under three commitment conditions: explicit, implicit, and none.
  • Behavioral responses to defection temptations were recorded.

Main Results:

  • 3-year-olds resisted bribes more under explicit commitment than parallel play.
  • 5-year-olds resisted bribes more in both implicit and explicit commitment conditions compared to no commitment.
  • 5-year-olds demonstrated a clearer understanding of interdependence-based implicit commitment.

Conclusions:

  • Children at both ages exhibit commitment to partners when faced with defection incentives.
  • Older children (5-year-olds) better grasp the concept of implicit commitment derived from mutual interdependence.
  • Developmental differences exist in the understanding and application of social commitments.

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