The Development of Theory of Mind and Positive and Negative Reciprocity in Preschool Children.

Joanna Schug,Catalina Benech,Hiroyuki Okada,Haruto Takagishi

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00888

Joanna Schug, Catalina Benech + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00888

Copy DOI

Abstract

This study examined the relation between the acquisition of false-beliefs theory of mind (ToM) and reciprocity in preschoolers. Preschool-aged children completed a task assessing the understanding of false beliefs, and played an Ultimatum Game (UG) with another child in a face-to-face setting. Negative reciprocity was assessed by examining the rejection of unfair offers made by another child in the UG, while positive reciprocity was assessed by examining allocations made by participants in a Dictator Game (DG) following the UG. The results indicated that children who had passed a task assessing first-order false beliefs were more likely to make generous offers in a DG following a fair offer made by their partner in a proceeding UG, but that false beliefs ToM was unrelated to the rejection of unfair offers in the UG.

Highlights

Reciprocity plays a very important role in the maintenance of human society (Axelrod, 1986; Nowak and Sigmund, 1998; Gintis, 2000; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003, 2004), and is observed in every human culture (Gouldner, 1960)
The studies presented above examine the impact of theory of mind (ToM), necessary to understand the intentions of others, on positive and negative reciprocity
The current study found that children who had acquired ToM were not more likely to respond to unfair offers in an Ultimatum Game (UG) with selfish offers in a Dictator Game (DG), in which children were given the option to allocate resources between themselves and a partner in any way they pleased

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Reciprocity plays a very important role in the maintenance of human society (Axelrod, 1986; Nowak and Sigmund, 1998; Gintis, 2000; Fehr and Fischbacher, 2003, 2004), and is observed in every human culture (Gouldner, 1960). A number of studies examining the development of preferences for fairness in children have used the UG (Takagishi et al, 2010, 2014; Blake and McAuliffe, 2011; Blake et al, 2015) These studies have found no evidence to suggest that the development of FB ToM plays any role in negative reciprocity among responders in the UG: children who had developed the ability to understand the intentions of others were no more likely to reject unfair offers. Because results of previous studies have shown that even young children, who likely have not acquired FB ToM, frequently reject unfair offers in an UG (House et al, 2013) we predicted that FB ToM would impact only positive reciprocity, but not negative reciprocity

Participants

Procedures

RESULTS

DISCUSSION