Favoring the friend or the poor? Dissociations between preschoolers’ normative views and own resource distributions

• In Event: Do young children and non-human primates care about other people’s needs?

Abstract

Children’s sharing behavior and its underlying motivation is topic of increasing research. One theoretical account suggests that prosocial behavior is guided by concern for others and fairness considerations (Batson, 2011). Another account proposes prosocial behavior to develop out of routines in social interactions (Carpendale et al., 2013) and thus highlights the role of friendship for sharing decisions. Contrasting fairness and friendship directly, recent research suggests that children share more with a friend than a non-friend, even when the friend is rich and the non-friend is poor (Paulus, 2016). This seems to be in contrast to views that suggest children’s sharing decisions to reflect fairness-based concerns. Given these different accounts on guiding factors of sharing decisions and the theoretical dispute about the alignment of normative views and behavior (Blake, 2018; Walker, 2004), we addressed two questions: First, in order to speak to these theoretical debates, we directly compared children’s normative view and own resource distribution in the context of friendship and fairness. Second, in order to address interindividual differences in this context, we examined the relation of children’s normative view and own behavior on an individual level.

The current study investigated preschooler’s normative stance and own resource distribution when contrasting friendship and fairness in a European sample (N = 91). In a third-person task, we assessed children’s normative evaluations (e.g., protest, punishment judgments) of puppets who favored either a rich friend over a poor non-friend or vice versa. Additionally, we assessed children’s own resource distribution between a rich friend and a poor non-friend. Across 12 forced-choice trials representing three trial types, children decided how to allocate resources.

The results revealed a discrepancy between the normative and behavioral level: A norm of allocating more to the poor dominated on the normative level, with more affirmation, better evaluation, and less punishment requested for a puppet who gave more to the poor non-friend compared to a puppet who gave more to the rich friend (Z = -2.34, ts > 2.22, ps < .029). When allocating resources themselves, children favored the rich friend over the poor non-friend (ts > 9.50, ps < .001). Regarding a relation on an individual level, the findings revealed that children’s normative stance, that is, their selective protest and affirmation of one puppet, correlated with their own distribution behavior, controlled for age (rs > .24, ps < .044).

Overall, the study informs about how children handle different normative demands. While preschoolers normatively enforce favoring a poor non-friend from third parties, they themselves allocate more resources to a rich friend. On a group level, the study thus revealed a dissociation between preschoolers’ normative view and own resource distribution behavior in the context of friendship and fairness. Yet, on an individual level, preschoolers’ normative view and own resource distribution behavior are related. Thus, the study speaks to current theoretical disputes by demonstrating both dissociations but also alignments between normative views and behavior.

Authors

• Natalie Christner, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
  Presenting Author

• Monika Wörle, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
  Non-Presenting Author

• Markus Paulus, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
  Non-Presenting Author