The shadow of the future: 5-Year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, adjust their sharing in anticipation of reciprocation

Sebastián‐Enesco, Carla; Warneken, Felix

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2014.08.007

Cited by 91 publications

(93 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Another possibility is that individual differences in inhibitory control may have played a role, as turn-taking requires children to forego immediate rewards in order to achieve profitable outcomes in the long run. Correspondingly, previous research has shown that inhibitory control is related to other strategically prosocial behaviors in preschoolers, for example, the tendency to share resources with others in anticipation of reciprocation (Sebastián-Enesco & Warneken, 2015). Another alternative is that differences in children's preference for fair outcomes affected their propensity to take turns.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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

Grueneisen

Tomasello

2017

Developmental Psychology

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“…Resource sharing or allocation research often uses indicator games in which a participant, as a proposer, decides whether to share endowed resources with a recipient as well as how many resources to share (e.g., Lucas, Wagner, & Chow, 2008;Sebastián-Enesco & Warneken, 2015;Wittig, Jensen, & Tomasello, 2013) and allocation games in which a proposer selects among different types of resource divisions between a recipient and the self (e.g., Güroglu et al, 2014;House et al, 2013;Moore, 2009). In both paradigms, the amount of sharing increased as children's age increased.…”

Section: Different Experimental Paradigmsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resource allocation to kin, friends, and strangers by 3- to 6-year-old children

Chang

2016

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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“…The sharing of resources and sense of fairness that often drives it changes with age (Fehr et al, 2008). Sharing behavior is itself malleable and influenced by prior experience and context, as shown in previous studies manipulating reciprocal activity such as rolling a ball together or pushing buttons to activate a toy (Barragan and Dweck, 2014), pulling a rope together (Hamann et al, 2011; Warneken et al, 2011), or performing repeated iterations of the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Blake et al, 2015; Sebastián-Enesco and Warneken, 2015). Can children’s sharing behavior be affected by music or other shared rhythmic behavior?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Joint Rhythmic Movement Increases 4-Year-Old Children’s Prosocial Sharing and Fairness Toward Peers

Rabinowitch

Meltzoff

2017

Front. Psychol.

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The allocation of resources to a peer partner is a prosocial act that is of fundamental importance. Joint rhythmic movement, such as occurs during musical interaction, can induce positive social experiences, which may play a role in developing and enhancing young children’s prosocial skills. Here, we investigated whether joint rhythmic movement, free of musical context, increases 4-year-olds’ sharing and sense of fairness in a resource allocation task involving peers. We developed a precise procedure for administering joint synchronous experience, joint asynchronous experience, and a baseline control involving no treatment. Then we tested how participants allocated resources between self and peer. We found an increase in the generous allocation of resources to peers following both synchronous and asynchronous movement compared to no treatment. At a more theoretical level, this result is considered in relation to previous work testing other aspects of child prosociality, for example, peer cooperation, which can be distinguished from judgments of fairness in resource allocation tasks. We draw a conceptual distinction between two types of prosocial behavior: resource allocation (an other-directed individual behavior) and cooperation (a goal-directed collaborative endeavor). Our results highlight how rhythmic interactions, which are prominent in joint musical engagements and synchronized activity, influence prosocial behavior between preschool peers.

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The shadow of the future: 5-Year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, adjust their sharing in anticipation of reciprocation

Cited by 91 publications

References 47 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.

Resource allocation to kin, friends, and strangers by 3- to 6-year-old children

Joint Rhythmic Movement Increases 4-Year-Old Children’s Prosocial Sharing and Fairness Toward Peers

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