The Influence of Social Category and Reciprocity on Adults' and Children's Altruistic Behavior

Abstract

Evolutionary theories of altruism have suggested that reciprocal exchanges and ingroup favoritism have been important strategies leading to the evolution of altruistic behavior among strangers. This study investigates whether minimal information about an interaction partner's membership in a trivial social group affects the allocations of adults and children in dictator game, reciprocity in a sequential prisoner's dilemma, and altruistic punishment in a third-party punishment game. In all, 155 adults and 157 students from second and sixth grade played these three economic games in either an ingroup, outgroup, or neutral condition. Adults and sixth-grade children allocated more to ingroup than to outgroup receivers in the dictator game, and adults punished ingroup non-cooperators more in the third-party punishment game than outgroup non-cooperators. When additional information about the other player's past behavior was presented, adults reciprocated equally with ingroup, outgroup, and neutral players, whereas children from sixth grade reciprocated more with ingroup and neutral than with outgroup players. Overall, the results of this study support the importance of group membership and reciprocity for adults' and older elementary school children's altruistic behavior. For younger elementary school children, however, reciprocity and group membership do not serve as salient social information that influence their altruistic behavior.