The development of generosity and moral cognition across five cultures

Abstract

Morality is an evolved aspect of human nature, yet is heavily influenced by cultural environment. This developmental study adopted an integrative approach by combining measures of socioeconomic status (SES), executive function, affective sharing, empathic concern, theory of mind, and moral judgment in predicting sharing behavior in children (N = 999) from the age of 5 to 12 in five large-scale societies: Canada, China, Turkey, South Africa, and the USA. Results demonstrate that age, gender, SES, culture, and social cognitive mechanisms explain over 20% of the variance worldwide in children's resource allocation. These findings are discussed in reference to standard cultural comparisons (individualist/collectivist), as well as the degree of market integration, and highlight continuities and discontinuities in children's generosity across urban contexts.

The development of children's preferences for equality and equity across 13 individualistic and collectivist cultures

“…These similarities among diverse groups suggest that human cooperation is not merely a product of socialization and cultural learning. However, culture appears to impact the strength of these preferences and the age at which these preferences emerge, consistent with prior cross‐cultural research (Blake et al., ; Cowell et al., ). Children from the most individualistic countries exhibited stronger preferences to favor a poor or hardworking recipient compared to children from collectivist cultures.…”

“…For instance, parental levels of empathetic concern and justice sensitivity have been shown to predict infants' third-party social evaluations at the brain level (Cowell & Decety, 2015a), and societal differences in market integration impact decision-making in ultimatum games (Henrich et al, 2005). In line with these findings, culture affects the development of many cognitive abilities associated with prosocial development, such as executive functioning (Imada, Carlson, & Itakura, 2013;Lan, Legare, Ponitz, Li, & Morrison, 2011) and theory of mind (Cowell et al, 2017;Sabbagh, Xu, Carlson, Moses, & Lee, 2006). Cultural values transmitted in the social environment interact with individual differences in genetic traits to inform fairness cognitions (Knafo-Noam, Vertsberger, & Israel, 2018).…”

“…In a dictator game across five cultures, older children shared more resources than younger children overall. However, this egalitarian preference emerged earlier in children from the United States, Canada, and China compared to children from South Africa and Turkey (Cowell et al., ). Culture‐related differences also appear in children's spontaneous sharing decisions.…”

The development of cognitive empathy and concern in preschool children: A behavioral neuroscience investigation

“…All stimuli, depicting hands and feet either in pain or not, have previously been used in behavioral and neuroscience studies with both adults and children (e.g., Cheng et al, 2014;Cowell et al, 2016;Decety et al, 2015). The first was to think about how much pain the other person is feeling (affective perspective taking) and the second was to consider how sorry they feel for the person (empathic concern).…”

“…To assess prosocial behavior, children were then tested in a widely used behavioral economics game, modified for use with children (children's dictator game; Benenson, Pascoe, & Radmore, 2007), which is commonly employed in developmental studies examining empathy and prosocial behaviors (Cowell et al, 2016;Li et al, 2013;List & Samak, 2013) across different cultures. To assess prosocial behavior, children were then tested in a widely used behavioral economics game, modified for use with children (children's dictator game; Benenson, Pascoe, & Radmore, 2007), which is commonly employed in developmental studies examining empathy and prosocial behaviors (Cowell et al, 2016;Li et al, 2013;List & Samak, 2013) across different cultures.…”