Undervaluing the Positive Impact Prosocial Acts Have on Others Starts Early

• In Event: From Expectations to Experiences: Understanding Prosociality in Childhood

Abstract

From complimenting others to preforming random acts of kindness, emerging research suggests that adults routinely underestimate the positive impact their prosocial actions have on others (e.g., Kumar & Epley, 2018; Zhao & Epley, 2020). Miscalibrated expectations can create a psychological barrier to prosociality, leading adults to behave less prosocially than they might otherwise be inclined to. We conducted three experiments to test the extent to which these miscalibrated expectations are early- or late-emerging in development.

In Study 1, 50 children 8-17 years (M=12.08) and 50 adults visiting a museum were encouraged to give away a pencil to another visitor as an act of kindness; children selected children, adults selected adults (recipients were approached by an experimenter). These “givers” predicted how “big” their recipient would report their act of kindness to be, how positive/negative their recipient would report feeling, and how they themselves felt after giving away the pencil. Recipients then reported their actual perceptions on these same measures.

Both children and adult givers felt more positive than normal after their act of kindness (ps<.001). Givers underestimated how “big” their recipients would report their act of kindness to be (p<.001, η_p^2=.31) and how positive the recipient would report feeling (p<.001, η_p^2=.25). Alhough children reported the act itself to be bigger and reported feeling more positive than adults (ps≤.027, η_p^2 s≥.05), age was nonsignificantly correlated with magnitude of miscalibration.

We replicated these results in Study 2 with 53 children 4-7 years (M=6.31) and 55 adults. Again, children and adults felt more positive than normal after their act of kindness (ps<.001), underestimated how “big” their recipients would report their act of kindness to be (p<.001, η_p^2=.13), and underestimated how positive their recipient would report feeling (p=.013, η_p^2=.06). As before, children reported the act itself to be bigger and reported feeling more positive than adults (ps≤.001, η_p^2 s≥.10), but age was nonsignificantly correlated with the magnitude of miscalibration.

Children as young as 4 therefore underestimate the positive impact their random acts of kindness have on others. A final experiment examined whether children spontaneously consider the impact their random acts have on others to the same extent as adults, thereby serving as a barrier to prosocial actions. In Study 3, 101 children 5-7 years (M=6.46) and 100 adults indicated the degree to which they wanted to give a box of cookies to each of five familiar targets (e.g., friend, neighbor) either before predicting how each recipient would respond or after. Although correlations among interest in giving and expectations about recipient response were weaker among children than adults, they did not differ significantly across condition, suggesting that miscalibrated expectations may also create a barrier to prosocial actions in children.

Taken together, our results demonstrate that undervaluing prosociality is robust across a wide span of human development and highlight the need to examine the influence children’s biased expectations have on their decision making in prosocial contexts.

Authors

• Margaret Echelbarger, Stony Brook University
  Presenting Author

• Nicholas Epley, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author