Children Use Competency to Infer Who is a More Prosocial Sharer and Helper

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

Abstract

Prosocial acts require us to engage with other people and children must learn from a young age how to flexibly decide with whom to interact. To what cues do children attend to determine who is prosocial? Following social norms, specifically adhering to social conventions, may be one cue to with whom one should engage. The current research examined a potential cue to prosociality—namely, ritual competency.

Rituals facilitate high fidelity cultural transmission by serving as group identity markers, demonstrating group commitment, facilitating cooperation with coalitions, and increasing cohesion (Legare & Watson-Jones, 2016). Recent developmental research documented frequently co-occurring features of ritual that have independent effects on imitative fidelity, a measure of affiliation (Clegg & Legare, 2016; Herrmann et al., 2013; Legare et al., 2015). Ritual participation increases children’s affiliation with in-group members (Wen et al., 2015; Wen et al., 2020). While this provides insight into how children themselves behave in rituals, we know little about children’s evaluative judgments of ritual actions by others.

Across two studies, we investigated whether children use information about ritual competency to decide who is a more prosocial group member, specifically examining sharing and helping. In Study 1, 80 5-9-year-olds were presented videos of a social group (‘Ferpies’) performing a conventional behavior (making a ‘toma’, a scripted necklace-making sequence) and were shown an expert followed by a high and low competency performer. Participants were then asked to evaluate the performers to assess expectations for prosocial sharing and helping. Children were more likely to attribute helping behaviors (p<.001, d=0.56) and less likely to attribute antisocial behaviors (p<.001, d=.36) to the high competency performer. Children were also more likely to expect the high competency performer to share with group members (p=.015, d=0.28, Figure 1a) and contribute to a collective group good, χ²(2)=17.76, p<.001, Figure 2a.

In Study 2, we assessed whether expecting the high competency performer to be more prosocial was specific to ritual knowledge, by adding an instrumental action sequence. In two between-subjects conditions (ritual and instrumental), 140 5-8-year-olds followed the same procedure as Study 1. However, in the instrumental condition, we presented videos of an expert engaging in a stool-making sequence, followed by a high and low competency performer, then the same outcome measures. There was no difference between conditions across measures (see Figures 1b and 2b). However, when collapsed across conditions, we replicated the findings of Study 1. Across conditions, children were more likely to attribute helping behaviors (p<.001, d=0.30) and less likely to attribute antisocial behaviors (p<.001, d=.36) to the high competency performer, to expect the high competency performer to share with group members (p=.003, d=0.26) and contribute to a collective good, χ²(2)=16.19, p<.001.

Taken together, these studies demonstrate that children as young as 5-years-old use both ritual and instrumental competency to infer who is a more prosocial sharer and helper. Our findings provide insight into the kinds of information children use as markers of cooperation.

Authors

• Nicole Wen, Brunel University London
  Presenting Author

• Felix Warneken, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author