Abstract
Young children have long been known to act selfishly and gradually appear to become more generous across middle childhood. While this apparent change has been well documented, the underlying mechanisms supporting this remain unclear. The current study examined the role of early theory of mind and executive functioning in facilitating sharing in a large sample (N = 98) of preschoolers. Results reveal a curious relation between early false-belief understanding and sharing behavior. Contrary to many commonsense notions and predominant theories, competence in this ability is actually related to less sharing. Thus, the relation between developing theory of mind and sharing may not be as straightforward as it seems in preschool age children. It is precisely the children who can engage in theory of mind that decide to share less with others.
Highlights
As a social species, humans routinely engage in acts to benefit others, occasionally at cost to themselves [1,2]
Sally/Steve returns to the room and children are asked “Where will Sally/Steve look for the ball?” Children’s theory of mind accuracy is assessed based on whether they point to the original hiding location versus an alternate hiding location
To investigate the extent to which changes in generosity are influenced by underlying domaingeneral cognitive mechanisms, executive functioning and theory of mind were assessed in conjunction with a behavioral economics sharing game in a large sample of preschool age children
Summary
Humans routinely engage in acts to benefit others, occasionally at cost to themselves [1,2]. Children are given a number of rewards (usually 6 or 10) and the option to share none, some, or all of the rewards with another child, who they do not necessarily know (the identity of the other child is not revealed) and who they have no expectation to interact with in the future As all of these paradigms measure aspects of distributive justice, but require arguably different abilities in the child, the influence of developing perspective-taking and executive function on performance in each will inevitably vary. The present study directly compared the competing hypotheses that theory of mind abilities in children could either facilitate 1) increased sharing with a peer or 2) decreased sharing with a peer
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