Emerging Signs of Strong Reciprocity in Human Ontogeny

Erin Robbins,Philippe Rochat

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00353

Abstract

Strong reciprocity is considered here as the propensity to sacrifice resources to be kind or to punish in response to prior acts, a behavior not simply reducible to self-interest and a likely force behind human cooperation and sociality. The aim was to capture emerging signs of strong reciprocity in human ontogeny and across highly contrasted cultures. Three- and 5-year-old middle class American children (N = 162) were tested in a simple, multiple round, three-way sharing game involving the child, a generous puppet, and a stingy puppet. At the end of the game, the child was offered an opportunity to sacrifice some of her personal gains to punish one of the puppets. By 3 years, American children demonstrate a willingness to engage in costly punishment. However, only 5-year-olds show some evidence of strong reciprocity by orienting their punishment systematically toward the stingy puppet. Further analyses and three additional control conditions demonstrate that such propensity is not simply reducible to (a) straight imitation, or (b) inequity aversion. To assess the relative universality of such development, a group of 5- to 6-year-old children from rural Samoa (N = 14) were tested and compared to age and gender-matched American children. Samoan children did not manifest the same propensity toward strong reciprocity. The results are interpreted as pointing to (1) the developmental emergence of an ethical stance between 3 and 5 years of age, and (2) that the expression of such stance by young children could depend on culture.

Highlights

Defectors of potential cooperation tend to be punished, even in anonymous interactions and even when such punishment is costly, not rational in either long or short economic terms, with the caveat that it can vary across cultures (Henrich et al, 2006; Henrich and Henrich, 2007)
As for rationale, we considered that if reciprocity guides children’s sharing, they should give more coins to the generous rather than the stingy puppet when it is their turn to split
Amongst 5year-olds there was a non-significant trend for children to give more coins to the left (M ± SD = 3.40 ± 1.79) and to the right puppet (M ± SD = 3.34 ± 1.56) than to themselves (M ± SD = 2.27 ± 1.28), suggesting that these children were sharing with almost absolute equity

Summary

Introduction

Defectors of potential cooperation tend to be punished, even in anonymous interactions and even when such punishment is costly, not rational in either long or short economic terms, with the caveat that it can vary across cultures (Henrich et al, 2006; Henrich and Henrich, 2007). The question of interest here is when does such propensity start to emerge in human ontogeny and what is its significance in child development. Recent evidence suggests that human pro-social tendencies are deeply rooted in development, already present from the middle of the first year of life, as in the case of infants detecting pro-social versus anti-social acts perpetrated by third-party protagonists (Kuhlmeier et al, 2003; Hamlin et al, 2007) By their second birthday, children manifest the explicit inclination to help and collaborate with others (Warneken et al, 2007; Tomassello, 2008), as well as to display empathic responses toward suffering others (Zahn-Waxler et al, 1992; Eisenberg and Fabes, 1998). It is by the second year of life that children begin to show explicit attention to social norms (Kagan, 1988)

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Discussion

Conclusion