1-091 - A Cross-Cultural Exploration of the Role of Interdependence in Children’s Cooperative Motivations

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Cooperation is a human universal and developmental research is essential for understanding its psychological underpinnings. Previous research has supported the theoretical claim that social interdependence is central in generating cooperative motives (Roberts, 2005; Tomasello et al., 2012). Children as young as age four, for instance, share resources more after interdependent collaboration than after individual work (Hamann et al., 2011). However, this issue has almost exclusively been studied in Western societies, thus questioning the generalizability of these findings and calling for cross-cultural validation. Secondly, the kinds of cooperative motives that interdependence elicits (e.g., fairness, altruism, commitment) have yet to be determined. This symposium integrates cross-cultural research on the role of interdependence in several aspects of children’s cooperative decision-making (sharing, investing effort, dividing monopolizable resources). The first presentation demonstrates that interdependent collaboration encourages equal sharing in Canadian and Indian children, lending cross-cultural support to the interdependence hypothesis. Using a version of the famous marshmallow paradigm, the second presentation shows that German and Kikuyu children invest more psychological effort when their outcomes are interdependently linked. The third presentation broadens the thematic scope to collaboration in groups and shows that children from five cultures exhibit both similarities and differences when collaboratively negotiating resource access. The fourth presentation offers an empirically informed philosophical account of the mechanisms by which interdependent collaboration generates cooperative motivations, particularly a sense of commitment. Together, the symposium provides key new insights into the motivational structure underlying human cooperation while highlighting the importance of cross-cultural data for understanding its developmental origins.

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chair

• Sebastian Grueneisen, University of Michigan

Individual Presentations

• Children Increase Sharing to Collaborators, but Restrict Equality to the Spoils of Collaboration - Presenting Author: John Corbit, Saint Francis Xavier University

• Interdependence Facilitates Children’s Delayed Gratification in a Joint Marshmallow Task - Presenting Author: Sebastian Grueneisen, University of Michigan; Non-Presenting Author: Rebecca Koomen, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Non-Presenting Author: Esther Herrmann, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

• Children’s Collaboration in Peer Groups Across Diverse Societies - Presenting Author: Patricia Kanngiesser, Freie Universität Berlin; Non-Presenting Author: Esther Herrmann, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Non-Presenting Author: Marie Schäfer, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Non-Presenting Author: Henriette Zeidler, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Non-Presenting Author: Michael Tomasello, Duke University

• Stuck With You: A Framework for Investigating Social Interdependence as a Source of Cooperative Motives - Presenting Author: John Michael, University of Warwick; Central European University