Preschoolers’ ingroup bias in predicting others’ sharing: The role of contexts and theory of mind

Abstract

The current study investigated preschoolers’ ingroup bias in predicting people’s sharing across contexts and its relation to second-order theory of mind (ToM) ability. In Experiment 1, 96 5- and 6-year-old children were assigned to one of two groups in a minimal group paradigm. They heard a story about fictional ingroup and outgroup peers sharing in a public or private condition and were asked to predict and evaluate their sharing behavior. Children predicted that ingroup peers would share more than outgroup peers and also showed ingroup bias in evaluation regardless of the equal actual sharing of ingroup and outgroup peers. Moreover, 6-year-olds displayed a flexible ingroup bias in predicting others’ sharing across conditions because they held such a bias only in public conditions and did not expect ingroup and outgroup peers to share differently in private conditions. Experiment 2 tested a new sample of 80 6-year-olds with the same sharing story and a second-order false belief task. Results showed that only 6-year-olds who fully passed the false belief task showed a flexible bias in predicting sharing across conditions. Results indicate that children’s ingroup bias in predicting others’ sharing is becoming flexible across contexts as they grow up and ToM skills contribute to the development of their increasingly sophisticated prosocial reasoning.