Cooperation and competition of Mexican, Mexican-American, and Anglo-American children of two ages under four instructional sets.

Kagan, Spencer; Madsen, Millard C.

doi:10.1037/h0031080

Cited by 202 publications

(109 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Dyads of U.S/ American 8-and 11-year-olds performed dramatically worse than 5-year-olds, the latter of whom spontaneously managed to extract about half of all marbles (see also Kagan & Madsen, 1971). In another recent study 5-year-olds were further found to reciprocally help each other obtain a reward (Melis, Grocke, Kalbitz, & Tomasello, 2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 91%

Children coordinate in a recurrent social dilemma by taking turns and along dominance asymmetries.

Grueneisen

Tomasello

2017

Developmental Psychology

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Humans constantly have to coordinate their decisions with others even when their interests are conflicting (e.g., when 2 drivers have to decide who yields at an intersection). So far, however, little is known about the development of these abilities. Here, we present dyads of 5-year-olds (N ϭ 40) with a repeated chicken game using a novel methodology: Two children each steered an automated toy train carrying a reward. The trains simultaneously moved toward each other so that in order to avoid a crash-which left both children empty-handed-1 train had to swerve. By swerving, however, the trains lost a portion of the rewards so that it was in each child's interest to go straight. Children coordinated their decisions successfully over multiple rounds, and they mostly did so by taking turns at swerving. In dyads in which turn-taking was rare, dominant children obtained significantly higher payoffs than their partners. Moreover, the coordination process was more efficient in turn-taking dyads as indicated by a significant reduction in conflicts and verbal protest. These findings indicate that already by the late preschool years children can independently coordinate decisions with peers in recurrent conflicts of interest.Keywords: coordination, cooperation, conflict, compromise, turn-taking, dominanceHumans are highly successful at coordinating their decisions with others when pursuing shared interests (Bicchieri, 2006;Tomasello, 2014). However, a central challenge of human social functioning is that people often have to coordinate even in social dilemmas in which their interests are conflicting, for example, when one of two drivers has to yield at an intersection or when deciding who has to do an undesirable part of a joint work project. What these situations have in common is that each individual prefers someone else to incur the cost of behaving cooperatively but everyone is worse off if no one volunteers to cooperate (commonly modeled as "volunteer's dilemmas" or "chicken games" in game theory; see Archetti, 2009;Rapoport & Chammah, 1966). In large modern societies these situations are often resolved through collectively agreed upon coordination rules grounded in our culturally shared normative understanding (e.g., standing in line at supermarket checkouts) and sometimes formulated in formal laws (e.g., traffic rules).In repeated dyadic interactions, however, such explicit rules often do not exist and people are frequently required to generate solutions independently, for example, when two spouses have to decide who picks up the kids from school. One solution to dyadic conflict-of-interest coordination problems is to take turns at behaving cooperatively as this ensures that the interaction is mutually profitable in the long run. Indeed, turn-taking is commonly used in natural settings, as shown, for example, by ethnographic analyses of fishermen taking turns at fishing in preferred spots (Berkes, 1986), or anecdotal evidence of soldiers taking turns at assuming the most exposed position in a combat military formati...

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confidence: 91%

Children coordinate in a recurrent social dilemma by taking turns and along dominance asymmetries.

Grueneisen

Tomasello

2017

Developmental Psychology

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“…Similar studies have de scribed Mexican-American children as less competitive [Hoppe et al. 1977: Kagan andMadsen, 1971], less rivalrous, less assertive and more submissive [Kagan and Madsen, 1972] than Anglo children. Conversely, other studies have consistently found that Mexican-American children are more co operatively motivated than Anglo children [see Kagan, 1977, for a review].…”

Section: Family As a Unit Of Analysismentioning

confidence: 76%

Family Socialization among Mexican Americans

Martínez¹

1986

Human Development

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This article introduces some theoretical presuppositions and a comprehensive analytic model to integrate available literature on family socialization of Mexican Americans and to guide future research. The theoretical postulates derive from a sociohistorical approach that describes human growth as a continuous process of socialization by which individuals become members of multiple social systems in the context of social relations. The analytic model incorporates multiple variables from different levels – the individual, the microsocial, and the macrosocial – stressing their interrelatedness and interconnectedness as reflected in linguistic communications. Literature dealing only with Mexican Americans is reviewed to demonstrate the usefulness of the model and to suggest guidelines for future research.

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“…The most common method for studying cooperation and competition in the laboratory is through the use of experimental games. Experimental games have been used in several major studies comparing Mexican-American and Anglo-American children (Avellar & Kagan, 1976;Kagan & Madsen, 1971;Kagan, Zahn, & Gealy, 1977;Knight & Kagan, 1977;Madsen & Shapira, 1970). There were problems in that these studies either confounded ethnicity and socioeconomic status (e.g., Madsen & Shapira, 1970) or did not allow the separation of a desire to win rewards for oneself (individualism or competition) from a desire to win rewards for the group (cooperation or altruism).…”

Section: Cooperation and Competitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Diaz-Guerrero (1979, for example, has reported that Anglos are relatively low in susceptibility to influence and that Mexicans are relatively high in susceptibility to influence. Support for this notion has resulted from phenomenological evaluations (e.g., Heller, 1966;Madsen, 1964), from field observations (e.g., Lewis, 1951;Redfield, 1930), and from laboratory experiments (Avellar & Kagan, 1976;Kagan & Madsen, 1971, 1972a, 1972bKagan, Zahn, & Gealy, 1977;Madsen & Shapira, 1970); but it is difficult to arrive at any firm conclusions based on these studies because they vary widely in their approaches to the study of susceptibility to influence, and because much of the assessment has had serious methodological flaws.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Conformity and cooperation in chicanos: The case of the missing susceptibility to influence

Melgoza

Roll²,

Baker

1983

J. Community Psychol.

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Two hypotheses with regard to Chicano versus Anglo susceptibility to influence were examined: that Chicanas are more cooperative (less competitive), and that they are more conforming than female Anglos. The subjects were 281 female university students. “Cooperation group” and “Conformity group” subjects completed modified versions of the Holtzman Inkblot Technique (HIT), with instructions designed to elicit cooperation or conformity. Control group subjects were given standard instructions. An unequal‐N design was submitted to an analysis of variance with four factors: Subject Ethnicity (Chicano or Anglo), Experimenter Ethnicity (Chicano or Anglo), Experimental Condition (Control, Cooperation, Conformity) and Order (Hostile Content first and Living Things Content second or vice versa). Conrary to previous findings, Chicanas were not more conforming or more cooperative than female Anglos. The results were discussed in light of methodological problems in previous studies.

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Cooperation and competition of Mexican, Mexican-American, and Anglo-American children of two ages under four instructional sets.

Cited by 202 publications

References 6 publications

Children coordinate in a recurrent social dilemma by taking turns and along dominance asymmetries.

Children coordinate in a recurrent social dilemma by taking turns and along dominance asymmetries.

Family Socialization among Mexican Americans

Conformity and cooperation in chicanos: The case of the missing susceptibility to influence

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