Giving to Friends, Classmates, and Strangers in Adolescence

Abstract

This study examined how perspective taking and sensitivity to social rewards predict giving to friends, classmates, and strangers in adolescence. Five hundred and twenty adolescents aged 12–17 years completed questionnaires on perspective taking and social rewards and played three Dictator Games in which they divided coins between themselves and a friend, classmate, and stranger. We found that, irrespective of age, adolescents donated most to a friend, less to their classmate, and least to a stranger, and females donated more than males. Individual differences in perspective taking and social reward sensitivity moderated how much adolescents donated, especially to strangers. These findings suggest that perspective taking and sensitivity to social rewards influence giving behavior in adolescence, especially to unknown others.

Classroom peer preferences and the development of sharing behavior with friends and others

“…In line with previous studies, we found that girls shared more with an anonymous other than boys across the studied period (Fehr et al, 2013;Gummerum et al, 2008;van de Groep et al, 2019). We extend these findings by showing that girls also shared more with a best friend and disliked peer compared to boys during the elementary school.…”

“…Similar to other studies, we found level differences in sharing with different recipients (Güroglu et al, 2014;Lu & Chang, 2016;Moore, 2009;Paulus & Moore, 2014;van de Groep et al, 2019;Yu et al, 2016). Our findings together with previous studies underscore that children use social contextual information during their sharing decisions (Güroglu et al, 2009;van de Groep et al, 2019;.…”

“…In addition, 6-year-old children also shared more with an anonymous other than with a disliked peer (Moore, 2009;Paulus & Moore, 2014). Other cross-sectional studies do not support this differentiation during elementary school as they found that children aged 9-12 did not differentiate in the amount of resources shared with a friend, disliked, and anonymous recipient (Gü rog lu et al, 2014), but adolescents from 12 years and older did (Güroglu et al, 2014;van de Groep et al, 2019). Thus, results from previous cross-sectional studies were quite mixed on whether elementary school children share more with friends, compared to anonymous and disliked recipients, and how sharing behavior with friends, anonymous, and disliked peers develops during elementary school.…”

“…Although not exclusively, two characteristics of the actor may be of importance when studying the development of sharing behavior, namely the child's sex and a child's social preference among peers. Cross-sectional studies showed that girls are more generous than boys (Fabes & Eisenberg, 1998;Fehr et al, 2013;Gummerum et al, 2008;van de Groep et al, 2019). Several explanations for this sex difference have been proposed.…”

“…Our first aim was to explore the development of sharing behavior with different recipients across these ages. We expected that children shared more with friends compared to anonymous others and shared the least with disliked peers (Güroglu et al, 2014;Paulus & Moore, 2014) and that boys shared less than girls regardless of the recipients (Gummerum et al, 2008;van de Groep et al, 2019). We further hypothesized that sharing behavior with these recipients would increase from grades 2 to 6 due to the improvements in perspective-taking abilities and behavioral control during this period (Best & Miller, 2010;Frith & Frith, 2003).…”