An experimental vignette study was conducted among children (8-13 years) to examine whether inducing empathic understanding is an effective intervention to overpower peer group boundaries in children's helping. Children were induced or not induced to empathize with the recipient of help, who was or was not part of their (imagined) group of friends. Results showed that children intended to help in-group peers more compared to outgroup peers when empathic understanding was not induced. However, when empathy was induced, they intended to help friends and non-friends equally. Inducing empathic understanding was effective independent of the recipient's level of need, and children's advanced social perspective-taking ability. Encouraging children to imagine how a recipient of help feels might thus be a useful strategy to prevent peer group-based biases in children's helping behaviour.

No abstract

Children (n = 133, aged 8–13) were interviewed about helping situations that systematically varied in recipient’s need for help and the costs for the helper. In situations where helping a peer involved low costs, children perceived a moral obligation to help that was independent of peer norms, parental authority, and reciprocity considerations. When helping a peer involved high costs this over powered the perceived obligation to help, but only in situations involving low need and when in line with reciprocity. When both need and costs were high, younger children expressed stronger moral indignation while older children were less negative and reasoned in terms of other solutions. Furthermore, stronger moral indignation was related to more advanced social perspective taking skills when need and costs were high.

No abstract

Two vignette studies were conducted on children's evaluations of ethnic helping. In the first study, 272 native Dutch children (mean age = 10.7) evaluated a child who refused to help in an intra-group context (Dutch-Dutch or Turkish-Turkish) or inter-group context (Dutch-Turkish or Turkish-Dutch). Children evaluated not helping in intragroup situations more negatively than not helping in inter-group situations. This suggests that they applied a general moral norm of group loyalty that states that children should help peers of their own group. In the second study, 830 children (mean age = 10.7) read the same vignettes after their ethnic group membership was made salient. In the inter-group contexts, children who strongly identified with their ethnic group evaluated an out-group member not helping an in-group member more negatively than vice versa. Thus, when ethnic identity was salient, children tended to focus more on group identity rather than on the principle of group loyalty.

Two studies examined when and why children (10-13 years) help ethnic in-group and out-group peers. In Study 1 (n = 163) children could help an out-group or in-group peer with a word-guessing game by entering codes into a computer. While children evaluated the out-group more negatively than the in-group, they helped out-group peers more than in-group peers. Study 2 (n = 117) conceptually replicated the findings of Study 1. Additionally the results suggest that when children endorsed the stereotype that the out-group is "less smart," this increased their intention to help out-group peers and it decreased their intention to enter codes for in-group peers. The results suggest that the specific content of a negative stereotype can guide helping responses toward out-group and in-group members. (PsycINFO Database Record

Four survey experiments provide evidence that children (9-12 years) infer collective land ownership from first arrival. In Experiments 1 and 2, children indicated that a group owns an island relatively more than another group when having been or living on the island first. In the third experiment, it was found that first comers were considered to own the land more independently of whether the second group joined or succeeded them in living on the island. In Experiment 4, the first arrival principle to infer collective ownership was independent of the duration of stay of the first comers before being joined by the second group. Taken together, the findings provide clear evidence of the importance of first arrival for inferring collective place ownership.

Using an experimental design, native majority group children (8-13 years, N = 842) evaluated acculturation strategies (assimilation, integration, and separation) adopted by immigrant and emigrant peers. There were medium to large effects of the perceived acculturation strategies on children's peer evaluations. Overall, assimilation was valued most, followed by integration and separation. These effects were in part mediated by perceived national belonging. In addition, the effects were stronger for lower status compared to higher status immigrant groups, and for children with higher compared to lower national identification. For emigrants, separation was valued most, followed by integration and assimilation. This indicates that the intergroup processes rather than migration per se are important for children's acculturation perceptions and evaluations.