Abstract
Preschoolers are sensitive to differences in individuals’ access to external resources (e.g., tools) in division of labor tasks. However, little is known about whether children consider differences in individuals’ internal resources (e.g., abilities) and whether children can flexibly allocate roles across different goal contexts. Critically, factors that are relevant to role allocation in collaborative contexts may be irrelevant in competitive and prosocial ones. In three preregistered experiments, we found that 4- and 5-year-olds (mean: 54 months; range: 42–66 months; N = 132) used age differences to infer relative ability and appropriately allocate the harder and easier of two tasks in a dyadic cooperative interaction (Experiment 1), and appropriately ignored relative ability in competitive (Experiment 2) and prosocial (Experiment 3) contexts, instead assigning others the harder and easier roles, respectively. Thus, 3-and-a-half- to 5-year-olds evaluate their own abilities relative to others and effectively allocate roles to achieve diverse goals.
Highlights
Cooperation is a foundation of human culture and cognition, observed in diverse activities including governing, hunting, fishing, building, and playing (Brownell, Ramani, & Zerwas, 2006; Rogoff, 1990; Tomasello, 1999)
There was no effect of age in a logistic regression model using chronological age to predict role assignment, β = −.004, p = .995. This suggests that children ages 3 and a half to 5 and a half years can allocate roles in a cooperative interaction given inferred differences in ability. These results suggest that children consider their own and their partner’s relative abilities when allocating roles in a cooperative interaction
In Experiment 2, we predict that preschoolers should ignore relative ability and assign roles based on the relative difficulty of the tasks: assigning the easier game to themselves and the harder one to their opponents
Summary
Cooperation is a foundation of human culture and cognition, observed in diverse activities including governing, hunting, fishing, building, and playing (Brownell, Ramani, & Zerwas, 2006; Rogoff, 1990; Tomasello, 1999). Young children begin cooperating in problem solving and social games by their first birthday, and the sophistication of their cooperative interactions increases over the first few years of life (e.g., Brownell & Carriger, 1990; Warneken, Chen, & Tomasello, 2010; for review, see Warneken, 2017). Children cooperate by sharing food and toys (Brownell, Svetlova, & Nichols, 2009; Hay, 1979), pointing to inform others (Liszkowski, Carpenter, Striano, & Tomasello, 2006; Liszkowski, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2008), and assisting in goal-directed actions (Warneken & Tomasello, 2007). Children as young as 3-and-a-half flexibly divide labor by coordinating on tasks involving different subgoals (Ashley & Tomasello, 1998; Fletcher, Warneken, & Tomasello, 2012). Older preschoolers divide labor with respect to available resources: when the participant has both tools needed to achieve a joint goal while their partner has only one, 5-year-olds
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