Following the fast spread of Covid-19 across Europe and North America in March 2020, many people started stockpiling commodities like toilet paper. Despite the high relevance for public authorities to adequately address stockpiling behavior, empirical studies on the psychological underpinnings of toilet paper stockpiling are still scarce. In this study, we investigated the relation between personality traits, perceived threat of Covid-19, and stockpiling of toilet paper in an online survey (N = 996) across 22 countries. Results suggest that people who felt more threatened by Covid-19 stockpiled more toilet paper. Further, a predisposition towards Emotionality predicted the perceived threat of Covid-19 and affected stockpiling behavior indirectly. Finally, Conscientiousness was related to toilet paper stockpiling, such that individuals higher in Conscientiousness tended to stockpile more toilet paper. These results emphasize the importance of clear communication by public authorities acknowledging anxiety and, at the same time, transmitting a sense of control.
This study examined the effect of gaming context on young children’s prosocial behaviors. Dyads of 4- to 5-year-old children (
N
= 96) played the same game cooperatively, competitively, or solitarily. After playing the game for a total of ten minutes, sharing with and social inclusion of uninvolved third-parties as well as free play with previous co-players was observed. Children shared less with third-parties after playing the game competitively than after playing it cooperatively. Playing a solitary game resulted in intermediate levels of sharing. The structure of the game did not differentially impact measures of social inclusion or free play.
This study examined preschoolers' social inclusion-the active involvement of new partners into social interactions-in different intergroup contexts. Using an interactive paradigm, 3-to 5-year-old German children played a ball-tossing game with 2 puppets in which 1 puppet initiated the game with the child and another approached the game. In Study 1 (N ϭ 144), the initiator was from an ingroup while an outgroup puppet approached the game (ingroup/outgroup condition) or the child and the 2 puppets did not have any group membership (control condition). Social inclusion was assessed by analyzing whether and how children included the approaching puppet into the game. Results revealed that children were more inclusive with increasing age. Across age, children were less willing to include the approaching puppet in the intergroup context as compared to the control context. To further investigate whether the difference between conditions was driven by a preference for the ingroup or a derogation of the outgroup, a second study (N ϭ 72) was conducted. Here, the initiating puppet was neutral (i.e., no group membership) and the approaching puppet was from an outgroup (neutral/outgroup condition). In this condition, social inclusion was in between the 2 conditions of Study 1. Further, the developmental trajectory found in Study 1 could be replicated in Study 2 such that children were more likely to include the approaching puppet with increasing age. These results suggest that children's willingness to include others increases over preschool age and is influenced by both ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation.
Past research suggests that children favour their in-group members over out-group members as indicated by selective prosociality such as sharing or social inclusion. This preregistered study examined how playing a cooperative, competitive or solitary game influences German 4- to 6-year-olds’ in-group bias and their general willingness to act prosocially, independent of the recipient's group membership (
N
= 144). After playing the game, experimenters introduced minimal groups and assessed children's sharing with an in-group and an out-group member as well as their social inclusion of an out-group member into an in-group interaction. Furthermore, we assessed children's physical engagement and parents' social dominance orientation (SDO)—a scale indicating the preference for inequality among social groups—to learn more about inter-individual differences in children's prosocial behaviours. Results suggest that children showed a stronger physical engagement while playing competitively as compared with cooperatively or alone. The different gaming contexts did not impact children's subsequent in-group bias or general willingness to act prosocially. Parental SDO was not linked to children's prosocial behaviours. These results indicate that competition can immediately affect children's behaviour while playing but raise doubt on the importance of cooperative and competitive play for children's subsequent intergroup and prosocial behaviour.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.