Abstract
Possessiveness toward objects and sharing are competing tendencies that influence dyadic and group interactions within the primate lineage. A distinctive form of sharing in adult Homo sapiens involves active giving of high-valued possessions to others, without an immediate reciprocal benefit. In two Experiments with 19-month-old human infants (N = 96), we found that despite measurable possessive behavior toward their own personal objects (favorite toy, bottle), infants spontaneously gave these items to a begging stranger. Moreover, human infants exhibited this behavior across different types of objects that are relevant to theory (personal objects, sweet food, and common objects)—showing flexible generalizability not evidenced in non-human primates. We combined these data with a previous dataset, yielding a large sample of infants (N = 192), and identified sociocultural factors that may calibrate young infants’ sharing of objects with others. The current findings show a proclivity that is rare or absent in our closest living relatives—the capacity to override possessive behavior toward personally valued objects by sharing those same desired objects with others.
Highlights
Background and classification variablesFor the sibling and ethnic-cultural background variables, infants were classified following the same procedure described e lsewhere[28]
We report five analyses that highlight the degree to which human infants can overcome possessiveness in favor of sharing with non-kin strangers
We found that human infants, by 19-months of age, show significant possessive behavior to their personal items and that some infants can override this possessiveness in favor of giving up a high-value object to a non-kin stranger
Summary
Background and classification variablesFor the sibling and ethnic-cultural background variables, infants were classified following the same procedure described e lsewhere[28]. The accidental-drop procedure we adopted was designed to exclude linguistic prompts (such prompts make comparisons with non-human primates difficult), exclude immediate reciprocity by the adult, and to provide infants with an escape route which made it easy for them to grab their high-value object and retreat to their parent, rather than to share with the experimenter.
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