Affective empathy and positive motivational change predicts forgiveness in a Prisoner’s Dilemma game for children

• In Event: Cooperation, Generosity, and Self-interest: New insights from economic games

Abstract

During peer interactions, transgressions or misunderstandings inevitably occur that place social relationships at risk. Forgiveness offers a positive means of restoring a relationship so that beneficial interactions can continue. Forgiveness is typically defined as motivational change by the victim towards the transgressor over time (McCullough, 2001, 2008). In adults, this change can either be an increase in positive motivations (prosociality, mutual benefit) or a decrease in negative motivations (revenge, competitiveness) (McCullough et al., 1998). Trait empathy is also strongly correlated with forgiveness in adults (Berry et al., 2005). However, little is known about how or when motivational change and empathy support forgiveness in children.

Research has found that preschool children will forgive a transgressor in one-shot interactions (Drell & Jaswal, 2016; Oostenbroek & Vaish, 2018). In the current study, we used a multi-round game to capture change in motivations towards the transgressor over time. Participants were 230 6- to 11-year-old children (mostly White and middle- to high-SES), tested online. Children played a repeated Prisoner’s dilemma game (RPD) with a child-friendly interface (Blake et al., 2015). In each round, the child and the partner could either cooperate by pushing 3 coins to the partner, or defect by pulling one coin to themselves. Simultaneous decisions lead to four possible outcomes: both cooperate (3,3), both defect (1,1) or one cooperates while the other defects (0,4). In three 10-round games, children played pre-programmed partners who defected (transgressed) in specific rounds. A Nice partner defected once during the game, an Aggressive partner defected twice in a row and a Strategic partner defected in rounds 2 and 6. Forgiveness was measured by average cooperation in the rounds after the transgression. Immediately after the partner first defected and at the end of each game, children were asked about their positive ("I want to help them win points") and negative ("I want to make them lose points") motivations towards the partner. Affective and cognitive empathy were assessed with a child-report questionnaire (Overgaauw et al., 2017).

We predicted that an increase in positive motivations and a decrease in negative motivations towards the partner would predict forgiveness. We also predicted that both affective and cognitive empathy would predict forgiveness across games. We used linear regression to compare models with and without interactions with age.

Results showed that Change in positive motivation towards the partner also predicted forgiveness for the two partners that defected twice. For the Aggressive partner, more positive change predicted more forgiveness (B = 0.08, SE = .04, p < .05). For the Strategic partner, positive change predicted more forgiveness but only for older children (B = 0.08, SE = .03, p < .05; see Figure 3). Change in negative motivations did not predict forgiveness. Additionally, affective empathy predicted forgiveness across games (B = 0.18, SE = .05, p < .001), but cognitive empathy had no effect. These results suggest that positive motivations and affective empathy are key mechanisms for forgiveness during childhood.

Authors

• Peter R. Blake, Boston University
  Presenting Author

• Rebecca Peretz-Lange, SUNY Purchase

• Xiaoou Jin, Boston University