Poster #116 - Children Consider the Beneficiary’s Preference in Evaluations of Socially Mindful Actions

• In Event: Poster Session 14

Abstract

People value indirect prosocial actions that benefit others as byproducts of self-oriented actions. One example of such an action is the act of leaving a choice for others when selecting an item for oneself. Previous work shows that adults and 6-year-olds evaluate someone who leaves a choice (i.e., two different items) for others as nicer than someone who leaves no choice (i.e., two identical items) for others (Zhao et al., 2021). However, these works have only investigated cases when the beneficiary’s preference is unknown. In the current study, we investigate how knowledge of the beneficiary’s preference may influence adults’ and children’s evaluations of the act of leaving a choice (or no choice) for others.
We presented children (N = 91, 4- to 10-year-olds) with a series of stories about characters taking a snack for themselves from a set of three items – two identical items and one unique item – in a way that either leaves a choice (two diverse items) or leaves no choice (two identical items) for the beneficiary. The beneficiary’s preference was systematically manipulated as unknown, preferring the unique item, or preferring the item of which there were two. After each story, children were asked to use a 1-20 scale (Bass et al., 2017) to evaluate how nice the protagonist was. Participants were also asked to make inferences on the protagonists’ intentions (e.g., why do you think he took an apple). We found that children’s evaluations of the character leaving a choice (or not) varied by knowledge of preference and age (see Figure 1). When knowing that the beneficiary preferred the unique item, children as young as age 4 rated the act of taking away the only thing the beneficiary preferred as “not nice” (M = 6.09, one-sample t-test compared to chance, p < .001). The most prevalent type of inferences of the protagonist’s intention referred to prosocial intention of satisfying the beneficiary’s preference (57.1%). When the beneficiary’s preference was unknown, with age, children increasingly evaluated the character leaving a choice as nicer than the actor leaving no choice (r = .59, p < .001). Children also increasingly referred to the prosocial intention of leaving a choice for others when inferring the protagonist’s intention (r = .40, p <.001). However, when the beneficiary clearly preferred the identical items, children increasingly rated the act of leaving two identical but preferred items as nicer than leaving a diverse choice (r =.22, p =.039). They also increasingly referred to the prosocial intention of satisfying the beneficiary’s preference when explaining the act of leaving two identical but preferred items (r = .41, p < .001).
Our results reveal important developmental changes between ages 4 and 10 in how children increasingly incorporate knowledge of preference into their evaluations of the acts of leaving (or not leaving) a choice; their evaluation develops from a mere understanding of the value of preference to an appreciation for the social desirability of making an autonomous choice, and then further, to a flexible appreciation of both preference and choice.

Authors

• Dandan Li, East China Normal University
  Presenting Author

• Lu Zang, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Xin Alice Zhao, East China Normal University