Abstract
This study was designed to investigate the impact of self-relevance between preschool children and recipients on children’s sharing behavior in dictator games using a forced-choice resource distribution paradigm. Experiment 1: A total of 75 children aged 3–6 years were evaluated in a first-party situation in which they were distributed as recipients and dictators and shared resources with distracting recipients with different extents of self-relevance under three different payoff structures, including non-costly, costly, and envy structures. Children could choose between a sharing option and a non-sharing option. The results showed that, in a first-party situation, children aged 3–6 years old typically share more resources with highly self-relevant recipients (friends) than with moderately self-relevant recipients (acquaintances) and lowly self-relevant recipients (strangers) and that they share more resources with moderately self-relevant recipients (acquaintances) than lowly self-relevant recipients (strangers). Experiment 2: A total of 62 children aged 3–6 years old were evaluated in a third-party situation in which they were distributed not as recipients but only dictators, making decisions between the options of sharing more or sharing less with distracting recipients who had different extents of self-relevance under three different payoff structures, such as non-bias, high self-bias, and low self-bias. The results showed that, in a third-party situation, children typically share in a similar manner to that of Experiment 1, meaning that children display selective generosity and that the self-relevance between the children and recipients played a key role. Across age groups, this study of preschool children (total N = 137) demonstrates a degree of effect of self-relevance on preschool children’s sharing in first-party and third-party situations, with highly self-relevant recipients receiving a more preferential share in the dictator game than those with low self-relevance, although this effect was stronger in the older preschool children.
Highlights
Sharing behavior is a vital research topic in the field of children’s moral and developmental psychology
Before the resource allocation task, the results of the selfrelevance rating between participants and recipients using an IOS scale showed that the scores of self-relevance were extremely significantly different since the scores of highly self-relevant
Post hoc multiple comparison revealed recipients were significantly higher than those of moderately selfrelevant recipients, and the scores of moderately self-relevant recipients were significantly higher than those of lowly selfrelevant recipients. These results indicate that participants were able to distinguish the different degree of self-relevance among recipients and prove the validity of manipulating self-relevance in the experiment
Summary
Sharing behavior is a vital research topic in the field of children’s moral and developmental psychology. Sharing resources with others is an important prosocial behavior (Markovits et al, 2003; Steinbeis and Over, 2017). Many studies have focused on sharing behavior in early childhood (Rochat et al, 2009; Svetlova et al, 2010; Baumard et al, 2012; Paulus et al, 2015). The Characteristics on Preschool Children Sharing Behaviors sharing behavior and decisions in young children, including recipients, distributors, objects and situations related to sharing resources (Kanngiesser and Warneken, 2012; Crittenden and Zes, 2015; Kogut et al, 2015; Gasiorowska et al, 2016; Hao et al, 2016; Malti et al, 2016). The generation of self-referential effects was related to the degree of development of self-concepts
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
