Being Sticker Rich: Numerical Context Influences Children’s Sharing Behavior

Abstract

Young children spontaneously share resources with anonymous recipients, but little is known about the specific circumstances that promote or hinder these prosocial tendencies. Children (ages 3–11) received a small (12) or large (30) number of stickers, and were then given the opportunity to share their windfall with either one or multiple anonymous recipients (Dictator Game). Whether a child chose to share or not varied as a function of age, but was uninfluenced by numerical context. Moreover, children’s giving was consistent with a proportion-based account, such that children typically donated a similar proportion (but different absolute number) of the resources given to them, regardless of whether they originally received a small or large windfall. The proportion of resources donated, however, did vary based on the number of recipients with whom they were allowed to share, such that on average, children shared more when there were more recipients available, particularly when they had more resources, suggesting they take others into consideration when making prosocial decisions. Finally, results indicated that a child’s gender also predicted sharing behavior, with males generally sharing more resources than females. Together, findings suggest that the numerical contexts under which children are asked to share, as well as the quantity of resources that they have to share, may interact to promote (or hinder) altruistic behaviors throughout childhood.

Explaining early moral hypocrisy: Numerical cognition promotes equal sharing behavior in preschool‐aged children

“…Several indirect pieces of evidence from our work suggest that there may be a unique impact of number knowledge, however: First, if other cognitive developments accounted for numerical cognition, we would expect to see a continued effect of age, after controlling for number knowledge. Second, smaller set sizes increased the rates of equal sharing behavior, showing that sharing behavior is affected by the inherent numerosity of the task (see Posid et al, 2015), even when other features of the task (e.g. vocabulary demands) were equivalent across trials.…”

“…They are also quick to recognize when others have violated norms of equal sharing behavior (Geraci & Surian, ; LoBue, Nishida, Chiong, DeLoache, & Haidt, ; Olson & Spelke ; Rakoczy, Kaufmann, & Lohse, ; Schmidt & Sommerville, ; Sloane, Baillargeon, & Premack, 2011; Ziv & Sommerville, ). Yet, when given the chance to act on these beliefs, it is striking that young children fail to actually share fairly with others in many contexts (Blake & McAuliffe, ; Fehr, Bernardt, & Rockenbach, ; Kogut, ; McAuliffe, Blake, Kim, Wrangham, & Warneken, ; Posid, Fazio, & Cordes, ; Shaw et al., ). That is, in spite of the importance that children place on equal sharing during the first few years of life, the behavioral manifestation of fairness is a relatively later‐developing phenomenon.…”

“…We investigated these possibilities by assessing children's sharing behavior in relation to their numerical cognition. We sampled the developmental time period (2.5–5.5 years old) during which children show important changes in both the ability to share resources equally (Posid et al., ; Chernyak et al, ) as well as in their numerical cognition—namely, their knowledge of the cardinal principle (Gelman & Gallistel, ; Le Corre & Carey, ; Sarnecka & Carey, ; Sarnecka & Lee, ; Wynn, , ). Importantly, we looked at children's numerical cognition in relation to their first‐party resource distribution, a task in which children may be less motivated to share equally and could hoard resources for themselves.…”

“…In the first experiment, children were endowed with a set of stickers and asked to divide them between themselves and another recipient. Stickers have been used widely in tasks assessing resource distribution and prosocial tendencies towards others, and young children view them as a costly and desirable resource (Blake & Rand, ; Engelmann, Herrmann, & Tomasello, ; Gummerum, Hanoch, Keller, Parsons, & Hummel, ; Leimgruer Shaw, Santos, & Olson, ; Posid et al., ; see Supplementary Materials and Supplementary Figure for an additional study) while also recognizing that others like and appreciate stickers as well. After the resource distribution tasks, children were asked to complete a version of the Give‐N task (Wynn, , ) to assess their numerical cognition.…”

Developmental Differences in Infants’ Fairness Expectations From 6 to 15 Months of Age

“…We hypothesized that differences in infants’ altruistic tendencies could be related to their fairness concerns. Altruism is defined as a behavior that benefits others at a cost to the self (e.g., Grusec, Davidov, & Lundell, ), and studies have revealed that children's altruism in the dictator game is influenced by considerations of a resource's value: Children are more generous when distributing their least favorite stickers compared to their most favorite stickers (Blake & Rand, ), when distributing items that required a relatively small rather than large amount of effort to obtain (Benozio & Diesendruck, ), or when resources are plentiful versus scarce (Posid, Fazio, & Cordes, ). Similarly, toddlers will more readily help an experimenter by handing her a toy that belongs to her rather than by giving up their own favorite toy from home (Svetlova, Nichols, & Brownell, ).…”