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When Generosity Backfires: Children's Evaluation of Sharing With Negative Social Consequences
Yunjin Qi1, Qiao Chai2, Jie He1,3
1Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University.
Cognitive Science
|January 21, 2026
Summary
Children evaluate generous sharing negatively when it harms a peer's reputation, regardless of friendship. This study explores prosocial behavior and reputation management in children and adults.
Area of Science:
- Social Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Moral Development
Background:
- Generosity is a valued virtue, but generous acts can have negative social consequences.
- Overshadowing a peer's reputation is a potential unintended outcome of generous sharing.
- Understanding how children and adults perceive such behavior is crucial for social development research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine evaluations of generous sharing that harms a peer's reputation among children and adults.
- To investigate whether the social relationship (friend vs. stranger) moderates these evaluations.
- To understand the developmental trajectory of evaluating prosocial behavior with social consequences.
Main Methods:
- Two studies involving 512 participants (8- to 12-year-old children and adults).
- Participants evaluated vignettes depicting an actor sharing generously, potentially harming a peer's reputation.
- The peer was either a friend or a stranger, and the actor's sharing was compared to the peer's.
Main Results:
- Children judged reputation-harming sharing more negatively and showed less willingness to befriend the actor.
- The social relationship between the actor and the peer did not influence children's evaluations.
- Adult evaluations in larger, modified studies also showed no influence of the social relationship.
Conclusions:
- Middle childhood involves evaluating sharing not just on generosity, but also on its social implications.
- Children are sensitive to how prosocial acts impact peer reputations, even when the act is generous.
- Social relationship does not mitigate negative evaluations of reputation-damaging generosity in children or adults.
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