Children's cost-benefit analysis about agents who act for the greater good

Acting for the greater good often involves paying a personal cost to benefit the collective. In two studies, we investigate how children (N = 184, M_age = 8.02 years, SD = 1.15, Range = 6.00-9.99 years) use information about costs and consequences when reasoning about agents who act for the greater good. Children were told about a novel community, in which individuals could pay a cost to prevent a consequence (e.g., holding up an umbrella to prevent rain from flooding the village). In Study 1, children saw two scenarios, one where costs were minor and consequences were major, and one where the opposite was true (major cost, minor consequence). Children in the former condition expected more agents to engage in costly behavior and judged refusal to engage in costly behavior as less permissible. In Study 2 we separately manipulated cost and consequence to see which factor influences children's judgments most - cost or consequence. Here, children expected agents to pay a minor cost regardless of consequence, and only expected agents to pay a major cost when consequence was also major. In their permissibility judgments, children judged refusal to engage in costly behavior to be less permissible when consequences were major than when they were minor, regardless of cost. These findings suggest that children are making principled judgments about acting for the greater good - both cost and consequence determine when we are expected to act, but consequence seems to be a particularly key factor in deciding when inaction is permissible.