The Influence of Adult and Peer Role Models on Children’ and Adolescents’ Sharing Decisions

Ruggeri, Azzurra; Luan, Shenghua; Keller, Monika; Gummerum, Michaela

doi:10.1111/cdev.12916

Cited by 32 publications

(35 citation statements)

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“…In the second phase of the study, we asked children to judge the giving behaviors of fictitious children. All children completed the sticker allocation task prior to the evaluation task since previous Reputation concerns and group sharing 9 studies find that children often adjust their sharing behaviors to align with those of their peers (House, Henrich, Sarnecka, & Silk, 2013;Ruggeri, Luan, Keller & Gummerum, 2017).…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Children are sensitive to reputation when giving to both ingroup and outgroup members

Yazdi

Heyman

Barner

2020

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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Previous studies establish that reputation concerns play an important role in outgroup giving.However, it is unclear whether the same is true for ingroup giving, which by some accounts tends to be motivated by empathic concerns. To explore this question, we tested the extent to which 5 to 9-year-old children (Study 1: N=164) and adults (Study 2: N=80) shared resources with ingroup and outgroup members, either when being watched by an observer (where we expected reputation concerns to be salient) or in private (where we expected no effect of reputation concerns). We also assessed whether children and adults differ in their beliefs about which form of sharing (ingroup or outgroup giving) is nicer. Although we found that both children and adults exhibited an ingroup bias when sharing, there was no evidence in either group that reputation concerns were greater for outgroup members than for ingroup members. We also found that, in contrast to adults, children shared more resources when observed than in private. Additionally, children evaluated ingroup giving as nicer across different sharing scenarios, whereas adults identified outgroup giving as nicer when the two forms of giving were contrasted. These results are the first to suggest that reputational concerns influence children's sharing both with ingroup and outgroup members, and that children differ from adults in their reasoning about which form of group sharing is nicer.

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Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Children are sensitive to reputation when giving to both ingroup and outgroup members

Yazdi

Heyman

Barner

2020

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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“…(). Thus, the notion that positive emotions provide an important incentive for making costly moral decisions (e.g., Paulus & Moore, ; Ruggeri et al ., ) needs to be qualified. It may well apply to actions that are internally motivated by the prosocial desire to enhance others’ well‐being, but it may be less relevant for actions that seek impartiality.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The same may apply to findings reported by Ruggeri et al . (). Thus, happiness in this study might mostly result from prosocial motivation and less from fairness motivation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…In a similar vein, Ruggeri et al . () found that children who gave away what they considered their partner's fair share (or even gave more) were more often happy about their decision than children who gave less. This trend was stronger in 12‐year‐olds than in 9‐year‐olds.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The ambiguity with regard to the motives for unselfish behaviour extends to the emotions involved when engaging in this behaviour. It has been argued that experiencing positive emotions when sharing with others is an important reward mechanism that compensates for the costs of moral behaviour (e.g., Ruggeri, Luan, Keller, & Gummerum, ). Correspondingly, anticipating positive emotions for moral decisions might make children more inclined to choose moral over selfish or non‐moral goals (Krettenauer, Colasante, Buchmann, & Malti, ; Malti, Keller, & Buchmann, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fairness, prosociality, hypocrisy, and happiness: Children's and adolescents’ motives for showing unselfish behaviour and positive emotions

Krettenauer

Bauer

Sengsavang

2019

British J of Dev Psycho

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The present study examined what motives account for age-related decreases in selfish behaviour and whether these motives equally predict positive emotions when making a moral decision. The study was based on a sample of 190 children and adolescents (101 females) from three different age groups (childhood, early adolescence, and middle adolescence, M = 12.9 years, SD = 2.58). A decision-making task was used where participants chose between (1) maximizing their own self-interest versus (2) being prosocial, (3) being fair, or (4) appearing fair while avoiding the costs of actually being fair. Overall, prosociality and fairness were equally important motives for unselfish behaviour. At the same time, the importance of fairness motivation increased with age. Hypocrisy motivation was less frequent than expected by chance. Prosociality was most strongly and positively associated with self-rated happiness about the decision, whereas the opposite was found for individuals who were motivated by fairness. Overall, the study indicates that children's or adolescents' unselfish behaviour in decision-making tasks are driven by a variety of motives with diverse emotional implications. The relative importance of these motives changes over the course of development. Statement of contributionWhat is already known on this subject?Older children behave less selfishly in resource allocation tasks. Prosocial behaviour is associated with positive emotions.What the present study adds? Unselfish behaviour is equally motivated by fairness and prosociality. Fairness motivation increases from childhood throughout adolescence. Decisions motivated by prosociality are experienced as more positive than decisions motivated by fairness.A child is asked to freely allocate units of a valuable resource (e.g., stickers, treats, toys) to themself and to a partner. What will the child do? Research demonstrates that children around the age of 3-4 years typically act more selfishly in such situations than 7-to 8-yearolds. Younger children maximize their self-interest, that is, keep most for themselves or do not share anything at all, while older children are more willing to grant others their fair share. This age-related trend has been replicated many times (for overviews, see

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Distributive fairness during the transition to adolescence: The role of peer comparison and social value orientation

Liu,

Hu,

et al. 2024

PsyCh Journal

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Combining the dictator game (DG) and the ultimatum game (UG), this study recruited 546 Chinese children (321 boys, aged 9–12 years) as distributors, and found that both peer comparison and social value orientation (SVO) significantly influenced children's distributive fairness from late childhood to early adolescence. Results showed that as the unfairness of peer proposals increased, participants decreased the amount of gold coins distributed to the receiver in both tasks, revealing a peer comparison effect. This effect was more pronounced for adolescents than for children in both tasks. In addition, participants' fair distribution behaviors in the DG showed a three‐way interaction effect of SVO, grade, and peer comparison. Specifically, for proselfs, children were not influenced by peers and consistently proposed self‐interested distributions, whereas adolescents exhibited a peer comparison effect; for prosocials, both children and adolescents were influenced by peers, but children decreased the amount of their distributions only when they saw peers make extremely unfair distributions, whereas adolescents decreased the amount of their distributions when they saw peers make both mildly and extremely unfair distributions. This study highlights the importance of social environment and personal trait in shaping children's fair distribution behavior during the transition from late childhood to early adolescence.

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The Influence of Adult and Peer Role Models on Children’ and Adolescents’ Sharing Decisions

Cited by 32 publications

References 58 publications

Children are sensitive to reputation when giving to both ingroup and outgroup members

Children are sensitive to reputation when giving to both ingroup and outgroup members

Fairness, prosociality, hypocrisy, and happiness: Children's and adolescents’ motives for showing unselfish behaviour and positive emotions

Distributive fairness during the transition to adolescence: The role of peer comparison and social value orientation

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