Costly Sharing and Moral Cognition in Children: Combining Behavioral Economics, Developmental Psychology and Neuroscience

• In Event: 3-229 - The Role of Middle Childhood in Social-Cognitive Development: New Evidence From Behavioral and Neural Studies

Integrative Statement

Social categorization and group identification emerge early in development and affect moral cognition and behavior. Young children exhibit asymmetric preferences for in-group and out-group members, leading to in-group favoritism and out-group derogation. Empathetic concern, defined as the motivation to care for another, is known to be a primary driver of prosocial behavior and may contribute towards intergroup biases in sharing and moral judgement. To identify the neural mechanisms relevant to social categorization, morality, and empathy, such as attention allocation, executive control and affective responding, EEG/ERP measures were recorded while children [7-9 years] viewed in-group and out-group faces either expressing sadness or neutrality. Children also read stories featuring interpersonal helping and harming situations and were asked to identify the protagonist/antagonist in each scenario in order to assess the extent to which group bias influences moral attributions. Behavioral economics games measuring both amount and value of resources shared with another child (in-group or out-group) were used to assess decision-making and prosocial behavior. The relationship between face perception, group attribution, moral evaluation, and costly sharing with in-group and out-group members was analyzed to determine whether early or late neural markers of group categorization and empathy predict prosociality toward members of different social groups. It is expected that children will show differentiation in ERP amplitudes in response to viewing faces from distinct social groups, specifically larger N1 and P2 amplitudes to out-group faces, indicative of implicit categorization. Moreover, N2 and P3/LPP responses to in-group sad faces are anticipated to be greater than responses to out-group sad faces, reflecting a greater implicit empathetic response towards the in-group. These differences in neural responses should predict greater in-group biases in costly sharing and attributions. This combination of neuroscience, developmental psychology and behavioral economics methods help us identify the extent to which children’s group membership influences moral judgment and willingness to engage in costly sharing, and whether neural patterns in response to in-group and out-group sadness predict cognition and behavior.

Authors

• Elizabeth Huppert, The University of Chicago
  Presenting Author

• Jean Decety, The University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author