(213 words)To what extent do early intuitions about ownership depend on cultural and socioeconomic circumstances? We investigated the question by testing reasoning about third party ownership conflicts in various groups of three-and five-year-old children (N=176), growing up in seven highly contrasted social, economic, and cultural circumstances (urban rich, poor, very poor, rural poor, and traditional) spanning three continents. Each child was presented with a series of scripts involving two identical dolls fighting over an object of possession. The child had to decide who of the two dolls should own the object. Each script enacted various potential reasons for attributing ownership: creation, familiarity, first contact, equity, plus a control/neutral condition with no suggested reasons. Results show that across cultures, children are significantly more consistent and decisive in attributing ownership when one of the protagonists created the object. Development between three and five years is more or less pronounced depending on culture. The propensity to split the object in equal halves whenever possible was generally higher at certain locations (i.e., China) and quasi-inexistent in others (i.e., Vanuatu and street children of Recife). Overall, creation reasons appear to be more primordial and stable across cultures than familiarity, relative wealth or first contact. This trend does not correlate with the OWNERSHIP REASONING IN CHILDREN OF 7 CULTURESRecent cross-cultural research indicates that market integration (i.e. average number of calories purchased per capita) and affiliation with a large world religion predict individuals' propensity to be generous as well as their tendency to distribute resources and engage in costly punishment . Such findings suggest that socio-economic and cultural context could determine much of the ways we tend to see and relate to material possessions: how we are inclined to share and distribute justice, how we think of who owns what and why?Ethnographies and comparative studies of property rights show how many norms of individual ownership may vary across cultures (Barclay, 2005;O'Meara, 1990). By the second year, children manifest explicit attachment to particular person (Ainsworth et al., 1978) and material things (Faigenbaum, 2005;, becoming vocal and explicit about their possession (Tomasello, 1998;Bates, 1990;Rochat, 2011). However, the frequency and form of infants' and toddlers' early attachment and exclusive control over things may vary across cultures. Early attachment to objects or transitional objects (Winnicott, 1953) is less prevalent in cultures where the practice is for children to sleep with their parents (Hobara, 2003). When asked to split valuable goods with someone else, preschoolers growing up in rural, traditional, or small communal living environments tend to be less selfish and more egalitarian In another rare cross-cultural study that compared one-to three-year-old toddlers growing up in different kibbutz, Lakin, Lakin, & Costanzo (1979) observe...

Strong reciprocity is considered here as the propensity to sacrifice resources to be kind or to punish in response to prior acts, a behavior not simply reducible to self-interest and a likely force behind human cooperation and sociality. The aim was to capture emerging signs of strong reciprocity in human ontogeny and across highly contrasted cultures. Three- and 5-year-old middle class American children (N = 162) were tested in a simple, multiple round, three-way sharing game involving the child, a generous puppet, and a stingy puppet. At the end of the game, the child was offered an opportunity to sacrifice some of her personal gains to punish one of the puppets. By 3 years, American children demonstrate a willingness to engage in costly punishment. However, only 5-year-olds show some evidence of strong reciprocity by orienting their punishment systematically toward the stingy puppet. Further analyses and three additional control conditions demonstrate that such propensity is not simply reducible to (a) straight imitation, or (b) inequity aversion. To assess the relative universality of such development, a group of 5- to 6-year-old children from rural Samoa (N = 14) were tested and compared to age and gender-matched American children. Samoan children did not manifest the same propensity toward strong reciprocity. The results are interpreted as pointing to (1) the developmental emergence of an ethical stance between 3 and 5 years of age, and (2) that the expression of such stance by young children could depend on culture.

Total Word Count (excluding abstract and references): 7,662 2 White bias in children across cultures Abstract (222) words)In 3 studies, we report data confirming and extending the finding of a tendency toward a White preference bias by young children of various ethnic backgrounds. European-American preschoolers who identify with a White doll also prefer it to a Black doll. In contrast, same age African-American children who identify with a Black doll do not show a significant preference for it over a White doll. These results are comparable in African American children attending either a racially mixed (heterogeneous), or an Afro-centric, all African American (homogenous) preschool. These results show the persistence of an observation that contributed to school desegregation in the United States (Clark & Clark, 1940;1947). Results also reveal a lack of congruence between skin color identity and preference is not limited to African Americans.There is a comparable, if not stronger White preference bias in five to seven-year-old Polynesian and Melanesian children tested in their native island nations. Using a modified procedure controlling for binary forced choice biases, we confirm these findings with second generation American children of Indian descent showing clear signs of a White (lighter skin preference) bias.These results are consistent with the idea that during the preschool years children are sensitive and attracted to signs of higher social status that, for historical reasons and across cultures, tends to be associated with lighter skin color.

a b s t r a c tIndividuals tend to judge bad side effects as more intentional than good side effects (the Knobe or sideeffect effect). Here, we assessed how widespread these findings are by testing eleven adult cohorts of eight highly contrasted cultures on their attributions of intentional action as well as ratings of blame and praise. We found limited generalizability of the original side-effect effect, and even a reversal of the effect in two rural, traditional cultures (Samoa and Vanuatu) where participants were more likely to judge the good side effect as intentional. Three follow-up experiments indicate that this reversal of the side-effect effect is not due to semantics and may be linked to the perception of the status of the protagonist. These results highlight the importance of factoring cultural context in our understanding of moral cognition.

We asked whether young children raised in an environment strongly promoting compassion for others, as in the case of Tibetan Buddhism, would show less proclivity towards self-maximizing in sharing. We replicated the procedure of Rochat et al. (2009) with a group of three-and fiveyear-old Tibetan children living in exile and attending a traditional Buddhist school where the Dalai Lama resides. We report that Tibetan children, like children of seven other cultures start from a marked self-maximizing propensity at three years of age, becoming significantly more fair by five years. These data confirm that the developing sense of equity by young children is comparable in the context of a compassion-based culture.

Previous studies have shown a developmental trend in mixed emotional understanding. As children develop throughout childhood, they begin to recognise simultaneity of positive and negative emotions. However, previous studies have limited ecological validity as they assessed emotion choice using only a single positive and single negative emotion. Therefore, the present study aims to broaden the understanding of mixed emotional development by allowing a wider emotion choice. Mixed emotions were measured using the analogue emotions scale (AES) which allows both intensity of the emotional responses and time to be captured. In the present study, 211 children aged 4–10 were divided into one of three protagonist conditions (self, peer and adult) and read a vignette about the protagonist moving house. Choosing from seven emotions (happy, calm, surprise, sad, worry, fear and anger), they plotted the intensity and duration of each emotion they thought was represented in the vignette. The present study replicated the developmental trend that younger children are more likely than older children to choose a single emotion, and older children are more likely to perceive more simultaneity of emotion than younger children. This trend was demonstrated in the number of emotions chosen, and also the complexity of the AES pattern plotted. Additionally, the present study extended previous research by demonstrating that by broadening the emotion choice, the emotion interaction is more complex than previous studies were able to show.

We applaud Baumard et al.’s mutualistic account of morality but detect circularity in their articulation of how morality emerged. Contra the authors, we propose that mutualism might account for a sensitivity to convention (the ways things are done within a group) rather than for a sense of fairness. An ontogenetic perspective better captures the complexity of what it means to be moral.

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