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Poster #126 - Children’s Costly Sharing: How It Depends on Recipient Characteristics and Development

Thu, March 21, 12:30 to 1:45pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

The ability to share is central to human social interactions (e.g., Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinard, 2006). Although pre-school and school-age children’s sharing behavior has been investigated (e.g., Baumard, Mascaro, & Chevallier, 2012; Paulos & Moore, 2015), few studies have examined developmental differences in how recipient characteristics impact costly sharing behavior in the early years. Drawing on previous related research (e.g., Malti et al., 2016), the present study aimed to contribute to a better understanding of developmental differences in sharing by investigating how pre-school children share resources according to different recipients’ conditions. Three hundred and fifty four 3 to 6-year-old Portuguese children (Mage = 4.82, SD = .98; 178 girls) were individually interviewed and given the opportunity to share 10 stickers with hypothetical recipients in five different recipient conditions: (i) neutral recipient (i.e., a child with the same sex and age of the interviewed child), (ii) morally deserving recipients (i.e., a child who shared her snack and who did not push another child), (iii) morally undeserving recipients (i.e., a child who did not share and who pushed another child), (iv) needy recipients (i.e., a child who was sad and had few toys), and (v) not needy recipients (i.e., a child who was happy and had lot of toys). Prior to the sharing situations, children were told that at the end of the game they would keep any stickers they did not share. Effect orders were controlled. There was a significant main effect of recipient characteristics on sharing behavior, (F(2.9,1026.2) = 10.908, vbp < 0.001, ɳ 2= 0.006), as well as an interaction effect between recipient characteristics and age group, (F(8.8,1026.2) = 5.112, p < 0.001, ɳ 2 = 0.008), indicating that recipient characteristics had different effects on sharing scores depending on age group (see Figure 1). Post-hoc analysis showed that at age 6 children shared significantly more than children at age 5 in the morally deserving condition (p = 0.02) and children at age 4 in the needy condition (p = 0.02). Comparisons within age groups revealed that 3, 4, and 5 year-olds did not differ in their sharing behavior across conditions. Only 6-year-olds shared significantly more in the morally deserving than in the morally undeserving condition (p = 0.002) and significantly less in the morally undeserving than in both the needy (p = 0.0009) and not needy (p = 0.03) conditions. These results suggest that children as young as 6 reward those who behaved morally or are in need and penalize those who misbehave. Theoretical implications for the understanding of the development of children’s sharing behavior and future research are discussed.

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