Interpersonal regret and prosocial risk taking in children

Why imagining what could have happened matters for children's social cognition

Counterfactual thinking is a relatively late emerging ability in childhood with key implications for emerging social cognition and behavior.

Counterfactual choices and moral judgments in children

When making moral judgments of past actions, adults often think counterfactually about what could have been done differently. Considerable evidence suggests that counterfactual thinking emerges around age 6, but it remains unknown how this development influences children's moral judgments. Across two studies, Australian children aged 4-9 (N = 236, 142 Females) were told stories about two characters who had a choice that led to a good or bad outcome, and two characters who had no choice over a good or bad outcome. Results showed that 4- and 5-year-olds' moral judgments were influenced only by the actual outcome. From age 6, children's moral judgments were also influenced by the counterfactual choices that had been available to the characters.

Adolescents' Perceptions of Social Risk and Prosocial Tendencies: Developmental Change and Individual Differences

Many prosocial behaviors involve social risks such as speaking out against a popular opinion, bias, group norm, or authority. However, little is known about whether adolescents' prosocial tendencies develop over time with their perceptions of social risks. This accelerated longitudinal study used within-subject growth-curve analyses to test the link between prosocial tendencies and social risk perceptions, in a sample of adolescents who completed self-reports annually for three years (N = 893; M age = 12.30 years, 10 - 14 years at Wave 1, and 10 - 17 years across the full study period; 50% Girls, 33% White non-Latinx, 27% Latinx, 20% African American, 20% Mixed/Other Race). The association between social risk tolerance and prosocial tendencies changed significantly across adolescence, such that at for younger adolescents, more prosocial tendencies were associated with less social risk tolerance, whereas for relatively older adolescents, more prosocial tendencies were associated marginally with more social risk tolerance. Additional individual differences by empathy (but not sensation seeking) emerged. These findings suggest that prosocial development across adolescence may be associated with an underlying ability to tolerate social risks.

Regret Now, Compensate It Later: The Benefits of Experienced Regret on Future Altruism

This article explores how experienced regret and relief evoked in a risky gambling task influence subsequent intertemporal pro-social behavior. We apply a dictator game experiment with delayed rewards to investigate the effect on donating behavior by simultaneously the time delay when the recipient accepts the donation and the emotions experienced by the participant. We examine this effect using a choice titration procedure. The results reveal that independent of the prior experienced emotions, participants’ donations decrease as the time delay rises; the hyperbolic model provides a better explanation of this finding. Significantly, experienced regret impacts the shape of the social discount function with delayed rewards, which is reflected in notably different discount rates. Participants who experienced regret exhibit a lower discount rate than those in the relief condition. Note that this distinct type of generosity differs significantly at the 14-day delay but not at the shortest and longest. It follows that regret can promote future altruism and intertemporal pro-social behavior, depending on the delay.