The effects of social comparison on social emotions and behavior during childhood: The ontogeny of envy and Schadenfreude predicts developmental changes in equity-related decisions

Developmental patterns and computational mechanisms of school-aged children's fairness-related decision making under social comparison

The developmental patterns and computational mechanisms underlying the impact of unfair offers and social comparisons on school-aged children's fairness-related decision making remain unclear. To address this, we recruited 190 children aged 8 to 12 years (52.1% female) in a multi-responder ultimatum game. Results revealed an age-related decline in children's tendency to reject unfair offers, partially mediated by emotions, alongside a slight increase in rejecting inferior social comparisons. Computational modeling identified two distinct motivations guiding children's rejection behavior: inequity aversion and inferior social comparison avoidance. Furthermore, there was significant variability in responses to superior social comparisons, with some children displaying aversion and others seeking. Our refined model enhances the explanatory power of inequity aversion theory in complex multi-player social scenarios, validating and refining existing theories. In addition, the exploration of superior social comparison tendencies reveals individual heterogeneity, enriching our understanding of children's social comparisons. These findings contribute to elucidating the developmental patterns and internal mechanisms of children's socialization processes, offering implications for promoting their social adaptation and mental health.

Children Sustain Cooperation in a Threshold Public-Goods Game Even When Seeing Others' Outcomes

Many societal challenges are threshold dilemmas requiring people to cooperate to reach a threshold before group benefits can be reaped. Yet receiving feedback about others' outcomes relative to one's own (relative feedback) can undermine cooperation by focusing group members' attention on outperforming each other. We investigated the impact of relative feedback compared to individual feedback (only seeing one's own outcome) on cooperation in children from Germany and India (6- to 10-year-olds, N = 240). Using a threshold public-goods game with real water as a resource, we show that, although feedback had an effect, most groups sustained cooperation at high levels in both feedback conditions until the end of the game. Analyses of children's communication (14,374 codable utterances) revealed more references to social comparisons and more verbal efforts to coordinate in the relative-feedback condition. Thresholds can mitigate the most adverse effects of social comparisons by focusing attention on a common goal.

Schadenfreude or empathy? Children's emotional responses to the physical pain and pleasure of prosocial and antisocial others

Adults' emotional reactions to the pain and pleasure of others are influenced by the moral character of those individuals. However, it remains unclear whether children's emotional responses also show such selectivity. To investigate this, we compared 4- to 8-year-old children's emotional responses to the physical pain and pleasure of prosocial versus antisocial puppets. In Study 1, children reported unhappiness after witnessing the pain of the prosocial and antisocial puppets but reported less unhappiness after witnessing the pain of the antisocial puppet. In Study 2, children reported happiness after witnessing the pleasure of both puppets but reported being less happy for the antisocial puppet. These results suggest that children are less likely to empathize with antisocial individuals. Meanwhile, children did not display Schadenfreude (pleasure at others' pain) or Gluckschmerz (displeasure at others' pleasure) toward antisocial individuals in our studies. Moreover, the selectivity of children's emotional responses disappeared after we manipulated the physical competence rather than the moral character of the puppets in Study 3. Our findings help to reveal the moral selectivity of emotional responses to others' pleasure and pain during early childhood.

Perceptions of patients and their relatives about schadenfreude towards doctors

Background

Violence in healthcare is a global issue that healthcare professionals experience. The concerning increase in violent incidents in Turkiye particularly makes it a significant problem to explore by examining the underlying psychological factors. In this sense, this study focuses on the concept of Schadenfreude, the malicious joy of someone else's misfortune, towards doctors, which is an under-researched topic in healthcare violence. Particularly, there is a lack of research on patients' and relatives' perceptions of doctors.

Objective

This study aims to determine the level of schadenfreude in Turkish society towards the violence experienced by doctors and to develop a model revealing the underlying causes.

Methods

Using a convenience sampling method, we recruited 402 participants, who are not first-degree relatives of healthcare professionals, for this quantitative study. For data collection, we developed a survey instrument to measure the level of schadenfreude and six different psychological factors including empathy, sympathy, anger, aggression, and deservingness. For data analysis, we used structural equation modeling.

Results

The results showed that the lower the levels of empathy and sympathy towards doctors were, the higher the levels of both schadenfreude and aggression were. Envy had no significant effect on either schadenfreude or aggression, while deservingness directly affected aggression. The perceptions of participants regarding doctors that they deserve violence increased their aggression levels. Schadenfreude had a positive and significant effect on anger and aggression.

Implications

The examination of underlying factors of violence towards doctors points to a lack of mutual understanding between patients and doctors. The results of this study indicate a need for increasing empathy towards health professionals by creating societal awareness of their experiences. Local authorities and healthcare organizations can create environments that bring together the public and health professionals to share their experiences with each other or conduct campaigns to draw public attention to the issue. Moreover, training sessions on effective communication can be offered for health professionals to help improve patient-doctor relationships and healthcare outcomes.

Neuroanatomical markers of social cognition in neglected adolescents

Growing up in neglectful households can impact multiple aspects of social cognition. However, research on neglect's effects on social cognition processes and their neuroanatomical correlates during adolescence is scarce. Here, we aimed to comprehensively assess social cognition processes (recognition of basic and contextual emotions, theory of mind, the experience of envy and Schadenfreude and empathy for pain) and their structural brain correlates in adolescents with legal neglect records within family-based care. First, we compared neglected adolescents (n = 27) with control participants (n = 25) on context-sensitive social cognition tasks while controlling for physical and emotional abuse and executive and intellectual functioning. Additionally, we explored the grey matter correlates of these domains through voxel-based morphometry. Compared to controls, neglected adolescents exhibited lower performance in contextual emotional recognition and theory of mind, higher levels of envy and Schadenfreude and diminished empathy. Physical and emotional abuse and executive or intellectual functioning did not explain these effects. Moreover, social cognition scores correlated with brain volumes in regions subserving social cognition and emotional processing. Our results underscore the potential impact of neglect on different aspects of social cognition during adolescence, emphasizing the necessity for preventive and intervention strategies to address these deficits in this population.

Neural mechanisms of different types of envy: a meta-analysis of activation likelihood estimation methods for brain imaging

Previous studies have a lack of meta-analytic studies comparing the trait (personality) envy, social comparison envy, and love-envy, and the understanding of the similarities and differences in the neural mechanisms behind them is relatively unclear. A meta-analysis of activation likelihood estimates was conducted using 13 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. Studies first used single meta-analyses to identify brain activation areas for the three envy types. Further, joint and comparative analyses were followed to assess the common and unique neural activities among the three envy types. A single meta-analysis showed that the critical brain regions activated by trait (personality) envy included the inferior frontal gyrus, cingulate gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, lentiform nucleus and so on. The critical brain regions activated by social comparison envy included the middle frontal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, medial frontal gyrus, precuneus and so on. The critical brain regions activated by love-envy included the inferior frontal gyrus, superior frontal gyrus, cingulate gyrus, insula and so on. In terms of the mechanisms that generate the three types of envy, each of them is unique when it comes to the perception of stimuli in a context; in terms of the emotion regulation mechanisms of envy, the three types of envy share very similar neural mechanisms. Both their generation and regulation mechanisms are largely consistent with the cognitive control model of emotion regulation. The results of the joint analysis showed that the brain areas co-activated by trait (personality) envy and social comparison envy were frontal sub-Gyral, inferior parietal lobule, inferior frontal gyrus, precuneus and so on; the brain areas co-activated by trait (personality) envy and love-envy were extra-nuclear lobule, lentiform nucleus, paracentral lobule, cingulate gyrus and so on; the brain regions that are co-activated by social comparison envy and love-envy are anterior cingulate gyrus, insula, supramarginal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus and so on. The results of the comparative analysis showed no activation clusters in the comparisons of the three types of envy.

Common and distinct equity preferences in children and adults

Fairness plays a crucial role in children's social life and has garnered considerable attention. However, previous research and theories primarily examined the development of children's fairness behaviors in the conflict between self-interest motivation and fairness-complying motivation, neglecting the influence of advantage-seeking motivation. Moreover, despite the well-established role of gain/loss frame in human decision-making, it remains largely unclear whether the framing effect modulates fairness behaviors in children. It was hypothesized that children would exhibit advantage-seeking motivation resulting in more selfish behaviors in the loss context. To examine the hypothesis, we combined an adapted dictator game and computational modeling to investigate various motivations underlying fairness behaviors of children in both loss and gain contexts and to explore the developmental directions by contrasting children and adults. In addition, the current design enabled the dissociation between fairness knowledge and behaviors by asking participants to decide for themselves (the first-party role) or for others (the third-party role). This study recruited a total of 34 children (9-10 years, Mage = 9.82, SDage = 0.38, 16 females) and 31 college students (Mage = 19.81, SDage = 1.40, 17 females). The behavioral results indicated that children behaved more selfishly in first-party and more fairly in third-party than adults, without any significant framing effects. The computational results revealed that both children and adults exhibited aversion to advantageous and disadvantageous inequity in third-party. However, they showed distinct preferences for advantageous inequity in first-party, with advantage-seeking preferences among children and aversion to advantageous inequity among adults. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of children's social preferences and their developmental directions.

Your Pain Pleases Others: The Influence of Social Interaction Patterns and Group Identity on Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude is a joyful emotional response to the misfortune of others. Individuals' schadenfreude over the misfortunes of ingroup and outgroup members may vary depending on how groups interact. Accordingly, this study examines the effects of different social interaction patterns and group identity on schadenfreude and their mechanisms. The study participants were Chinese college students. Study 1 (n = 83) investigated whether there are differences in individuals' schadenfreude towards ingroup and outgroup members under two different patterns of social interaction: cooperation and competition. On the basis of this study, Study 2 (n = 73) focused on the mechanisms underlying the influence of individuals' Schadenfreude on ingroup and outgroup members in competitive situations, and the mediating role of disgust. It was found that there was an interaction between group identity and social interaction patterns, with people showing more schadenfreude over the misfortunes of outgroup members than ingroup members, and competitive situations increasing disgust and schadenfreude over outgroup members. However, no differences were found in individuals' schadenfreude towards ingroup and outgroup members in cooperative situations. This is instructive in terms of real-life intergroup relations as well as patterns of social interaction. This proves that cooperation and group contact is a way to reduce schadenfreude.

Children's self-evaluation of their prosociality when comparing themselves with a specific versus abstract other

This study examines the development of children's self-assessment of their prosociality in normative social comparisons with an average peer, who was either a concrete individual, or an abstract one, at a school of average socioeconomic level in south Israel (N = 148, Age 6-12 years, 51% females; June 2021). Results show that older children exhibited the better-than-average (BTA) effect by perceiving themselves as more generous than their average peer. Conversely, younger children exhibited a worse-than-average effect, in that they assumed that their peers would act more generously than themselves (η p 2 = .23 ). Only the older children (aged 8 years onward) were significantly affected by the concreteness of the target of comparison by exhibiting the BTA effect only when the average peer was abstract (not concrete).

Retirement Planning and Financial Anxiety among Nigerian Civil Servants: Insights from Social Comparison Theory

The psychological implication of retirement is underemphasised. This study examined the relationship between proactive personality, social comparison, and retirement anxiety among Nigerian civil servants. The study is a cross-sectional design, using proactive personality, social comparison orientation, and Nigerian pre-retirement anxiety scales. Five hundred and eight staff members in government-owned tertiary institutions with five years or less to go until retirement, and at a mean age of 57.47 (SD = 3.02), were surveyed. The study established that a proactive personality negatively predicted retirement anxiety and that civil servants engage in diverse forms of intrapreneurship/entrepreneurship to augment their savings. The study also revealed that social comparison (opinion) mediated the relationship between proactive personality and retirement anxiety (financial preparedness and social alienation). In addition, the study found that social comparison (opinion and ability) mediated the relationship between proactive personality and retirement anxiety (financial preparedness) in a sequential order. The findings suggest that retirees in Nigeria face complex challenges, including financial unpreparedness, social alienation, and uncertainty. The study highlights the importance of understanding the relationship between personality traits, social comparison, and retirement anxiety in order to develop effective interventions and policies that support retirees in Nigeria.

Empathy or Counter-Empathy? The Victims' Empathic Response Toward Offenders Depends on Their Relationships and Transgression Severity

Introduction

Empathy facilitates prosocial behaviors, whereas counter-empathy harms others. The question that remains unanswered is: when and for whom do people show different empathic responses? This study aimed to explore the effects of transgression severity and interpersonal relationships on victims' empathy or counter-empathy toward an offender.

Methods

Before and after experiencing a slight or serious transgression, 42 college students were asked to imagine that they had different relationships (ie, intimate, strange, or bad) with a person and then report their empathy or counter-empathy toward that person from cognitive and affective aspects.

Results

The results showed that, in the affective aspect, the participants' empathy for the intimate friend decreased after a slight transgression and even disappeared after a serious transgression. For strangers, empathy transformed into counter-empathy after the transgression, and its intensity increased with the transgression's severity. For a person in a bad relationship, the participants felt counter-empathy before the transgression, and its intensity increased with the transgression's severity. In the cognitive aspect, participants' counter-empathy toward the stranger and the person in a bad relationship increased with transgression severity.

Discussion

These results suggest that interpersonal relationships and transgression severity can change the type and degree of a victim's empathy toward the offender. Our findings not only deepen our understanding of the cognitive aspect of counter-empathy but also provide insights for handling interpersonal conflict.

The Effect of Malicious Envy on Schadenfreude When Schadenfreude Is Elicited Through Social Comparisons

Previous studies have investigated whether envy, particularly malicious envy, increases feelings of schadenfreude and whether this effect is evident in both gain and loss frames. However, as a social-comparison-based emotion, schadenfreude was not investigated through social comparisons in these previous studies. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate whether malicious envy influences schadenfreude when schadenfreude is elicited in the context of precise and ambiguous social comparisons. To address this issue, participants in the present study were asked to play a monetary game with several other players. In the experimental condition, participants gained less or lost more than the other player; in the control condition, both the participants and the player gained little or lost much. Subsequently, the participants observed that the player encountered a misfortune, that is, gained less or lost more money than the participant. The results showed that when participants knew the exact amount of monetary gained and lost by themselves and the other player (i.e., precise social comparisons), malicious envy increased feelings of schadenfreude only in the loss frame rather than in the gain frame. More importantly, malicious envy turned out to reduce feelings of schadenfreude in both gain and loss frames, when participants did not know the exact amount (i.e., ambiguous social comparisons). The findings provide novel evidence that malicious envy does not always increase schadenfreude particularly when schadenfreude is elicited through social comparisons.

Moral Development in Adolescence

This article provides a selective review of research on moral development in adolescence during the past decade. We begin with introducing key concepts and reviewing critical theoretical advances in the field of adolescent moral development. This includes integrative models to the developmental study of morality and dynamic socialization models of moral development. Next, related major empirical findings are presented on moral emotion-behavior links, morality in intergroup contexts, and the socialization of moral development. Next, methodological innovations are presented, including new techniques to assess and analyze moral emotions and moral behaviors. We conclude by pointing to promising future directions for moral development research and practices aimed at promoting ethical growth and civic responsibility in adolescents around the globe.

ERP Effects of Malicious Envy on Schadenfreude in Gain and Loss Frames

Previous behavioral and neural studies have shown the effects of malicious envy on schadenfreude. However, it is unclear whether these effects are modulated by contextual frames (e.g., gain and loss frames). Thus, the present study aimed to investigate whether behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) effects of malicious envy on schadenfreude were different in gain and loss frames. To address this issue, the participants in the present study believed they were playing a monetary game with several other players. In the malicious envy condition, the participants won less money than the player in the gain frame and lost more money in the loss frame; in the control condition, both participants and the player gained little money in the gain frame and lost much in the loss frame. Subsequently, the participants were informed that the player encountered a misfortune, i.e., gained little in the gain frame and lost much in the loss frame. Results showed that malicious envy increased feelings of schadenfreude and ERP responses when the player encountered a misfortune. Moreover, increased ERP responses by malicious envy occurred at the feedback-related negativity (FRN), and early late positive potential (LPP) time ranges in the gain frame but at the late LPP time range in the loss frame. The findings might suggest that malicious envy affects schadenfreude and corresponding neural activity, whereas the neural effects occur at comparatively early time ranges in the gain frame but at a later time range in the loss frame.

Influence of Group Identification on Malicious and Benign Envy: A Cross-Sectional Developmental Study

Envy is the result of a social comparison that shows us a negative image of ourselves. The present study addresses the effect of the context of group comparison and group identification on children's expression of this emotion. Through different stories, participants aged between 6 and 11 years were exposed to four contexts of upward social comparison in which they had to adopt the role of the disadvantaged character. From their emotional responses and their decisions in a resource allocation task, three response profiles were created: malicious envy, benign envy, and non-envy. Although we found important differences between verbal and behavioral responses, the results showed greater envy, both malicious and benign, when the envied was an out-group. On the other hand, when the envied belonged to the in-group and competed with a member of the out-group, malicious but not benign envy practically disappeared. With age, envious responses decreased, and non-envious responses increased. The role of social identity in the promotion and inhibition of envy is discussed, as well as the acquisition of emotional display rules in the benign envy and non-envy profiles.

Who's more generous than me? Children's self-evaluation of their prosociality in normative social comparisons

We examined the development of children's self-evaluation of their prosociality in normative social comparisons (with an average peer). Results suggest that when comparing themselves with an average other in the abstract (i.e., without reference to actual behavior), elementary school children (aged 6-12 years) demonstrated the better than average (BTA) effect of perceiving themselves as more prosocial than their average peer (Study 1). However, when they evaluated other children's prosociality (sharing), after experiencing an actual opportunity to share their endowment with others (Studies 2 and 3), the younger children (at first-grade level) exhibited the worse than average (WTA) effect in that they assumed that their peers would act more generously than themselves. Task difficulty predicted relative self-evaluations across all examined ages, such that greater difficulty was related to a lower BTA effect (or a greater WTA effect). However, whereas the older children used abstract difficulty perceptions to evaluate themselves relative to others, the younger children's evaluations were affected only by the difficulty that they themselves experienced. In all age groups, the BTA effect was driven mostly by participants who were above the mean in the extent of their sharing, whereas the WTA effect was driven by those who shared below the mean of their age group.

Why do children punish? Fair outcomes matter more than intent in children's second- and third-party punishment

Humans punish fairness violations both as victims and as impartial third parties, which can maintain cooperative behavior. However, it is unknown whether similar motivations underlie punishment of unfairness in these two contexts. Here we approached this question by focusing on how both types of punishment develop in children, asking the question: What motivates young children to punish in response to fairness norm violations? We explored two potential factors: the direct experience of unfair outcomes and a partner's fair versus unfair intentions. The participants, 5- and 7-year-olds, were given the chance to engage in both second- and third-party punishment in response to either intended or unintended fairness norm violations in a single paradigm. In both age-groups, children were more likely to punish when they were directly affected by the allocation (second-party punishment) than when they were an uninvolved third party (third-party punishment). Reliable third-party punishment was shown only in the older age-group. Moreover, children's punishment was driven by outcome rather than intent, with equal rates of punishment when unequal outcomes were either the result of chance or the intentional act of another child. These findings suggest that younger children may be mainly motivated to create equal outcomes between themselves and others, whereas older children are motivated to enforce fairness norms as a general principle.

Adolescents' Narratives of Schadenfreude

This study explored the experiential determinants of schadenfreude, how schadenfreude changes as a function of relationship, and how recollections of schadenfreude may vary by age. Using a narrative approach, 12- and 15-year-olds (N = 60) described times they felt schadenfreude toward various peers and adults. We coded their responses to extract information regarding preceding misfortunes and underlying reasons for schadenfreude. We found that adolescents' schadenfreude often involved another's physical harm and failure, and was rooted in reasons of deservingness and personal gain. There were unique trends in the types of misfortunes and reasons mentioned toward each target of interest. Finally, deservingness reasoning was prominent within 15-year-olds' schadenfreude experiences. The findings are discussed in relation to adolescents' emotional experiences in conflict situations.

Preschoolers consider (absent) others when choosing a distribution procedure

This study investigated how the presence of others and anticipated distributions for self influence children’s fairness-related decisions in two different socio-moral contexts. In the first part, three- and five-year-old children (N = 120) decided between a fair and an unfair wheel of fortune to allocate resources (procedural justice). In the second part, they directly chose between two distributions of resources (distributive justice). While making a decision, each child was either observed by the affected group members (public), alone (private), or no others were introduced (non-social control). Children choose the fair option more often when others were affected (independently of their presence) only in the procedural justice task. These results suggest that using a fair procedure to distribute resources allows young preschoolers to overcome selfish tendencies.

The Impact of Self-Relevance on Preschool Children's Sharing

This study was designed to investigate the impact of self-relevance between preschool children and recipients on children's sharing behavior in dictator games using a forced-choice resource distribution paradigm. Experiment 1: A total of 75 children aged 3-6 years were evaluated in a first-party situation in which they were distributed as recipients and dictators and shared resources with distracting recipients with different extents of self-relevance under three different payoff structures, including non-costly, costly, and envy structures. Children could choose between a sharing option and a non-sharing option. The results showed that, in a first-party situation, children aged 3-6 years old typically share more resources with highly self-relevant recipients (friends) than with moderately self-relevant recipients (acquaintances) and lowly self-relevant recipients (strangers) and that they share more resources with moderately self-relevant recipients (acquaintances) than lowly self-relevant recipients (strangers). Experiment 2: A total of 62 children aged 3-6 years old were evaluated in a third-party situation in which they were distributed not as recipients but only dictators, making decisions between the options of sharing more or sharing less with distracting recipients who had different extents of self-relevance under three different payoff structures, such as non-bias, high self-bias, and low self-bias. The results showed that, in a third-party situation, children typically share in a similar manner to that of Experiment 1, meaning that children display selective generosity and that the self-relevance between the children and recipients played a key role. Across age groups, this study of preschool children (total N = 137) demonstrates a degree of effect of self-relevance on preschool children's sharing in first-party and third-party situations, with highly self-relevant recipients receiving a more preferential share in the dictator game than those with low self-relevance, although this effect was stronger in the older preschool children.

Human children but not chimpanzees make irrational decisions driven by social comparison

Human evolutionary success is often argued to be rooted in specialized social skills and motivations that result in more prosocial, rational and cooperative decisions. One manifestation of human ultra-sociality is the tendency to engage in social comparison. While social comparison studies typically focus on cooperative behaviour and emphasize concern for fairness and equality, here we investigate the competitive dimension of social comparison: a preference for getting more than others, expressed in a willingness to maximize relative payoff at the cost of absolute payoff. Chimpanzees and human children (5-6- and 9-10-year-olds) could decide between an option that maximized their absolute payoff (but put their partner at an advantage) and an option that maximized their relative payoff (but decreased their own and their partner's payoff). Results show that, in contrast to chimpanzees and young children, who consistently selected the rational and payoff-maximizing option, older children paid a cost to reduce their partner's payoff to a level below their own. This finding demonstrates that uniquely human social skills and motivations do not necessarily lead to more prosocial, rational and cooperative decision-making.

Exploring an Age Difference in Preschool Children's Competitiveness Following a Competition

Literature suggests that resource acquisition compels competition in young children. However, little is still known about the development of preschool children’s competitiveness. In this preliminary study, 166 children (aged 2–4 and 5–6 years) engaged in a dyadic competition which resulted in a winning and a losing group (in a control/non-competition group, participants engaged in a similar task which did not lead to winning/losing outcome), and then experimenters tracked their decisions to compete again with a rival (i.e., an individual they interacted in the previous competition task) and a non-rival competitor (i.e., an anonymous classmate they did not interact in the previous competition task) for a reward, respectively. As expected, results showed an age-related decreasing trend in the percentage of choices to compete with a competitor. However, this age difference was only significant in the control group when participants played with the partner with whom they interacted in the previous game and in the losing group when participants competed with a non-rival competitor. This study contributes to our knowledge of how competitiveness develop in preschool childhood, and calls for further research on the roles of motivation and cognitive control in children’s competitiveness.

Children's Inequity Aversion in Procedural Justice Context: A Comparison of Advantageous and Disadvantageous Inequity

There are two forms of unfairness widely studied in resource allocation settings: disadvantageous inequity (DI) in which one receives less than the partner and advantageous inequity (AI) in which one receives more than the other. We investigated children’s aversion to AI and DI in a procedural justice context. Children of 4-, 6-, and 8- years old were asked to spin a wheel (procedure) to decide how to allocate two different rewards with others. In each condition, they chose between a fair procedure providing equal chances for the two parties to get the bigger reward, and an unfair procedure (either a disadvantageous procedure in the DI condition, or an advantageous procedure in the AI condition). Results showed that children in the two younger age groups had a preference for the unfair procedure that would maximize their own profit in AI, but a greater aversion to the unfair procedure that would disadvantage them in DI. Eight-year-olds, however, had a greater preference for the fair procedure in AI than the 6-year-olds. In addition, the discrepancy between aversion to AI and DI disappeared in the 8-year-olds. The findings indicate children’s development of other-oriented concerns such as fairness concern and altruism in procedural justice, consistent with previous findings in distributive justice.

Longitudinal links between childhood peer acceptance and the neural correlates of sharing

Childhood peer acceptance is associated with high levels of prosocial behavior and advanced perspective taking skills. Yet, the neurobiological mechanisms underlying these associations have not been studied. This functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined the neural correlates of sharing decisions in a group of adolescents who had a stable accepted status (n = 27) and a group who had a chronic rejected status (n = 19) across six elementary school grades. Both groups of adolescents played three allocation games in which they could share money with strangers with varying costs and profits to them and the other person. Stably accepted adolescents were more likely to share their money with unknown others than chronically rejected adolescents when sharing was not costly. Neuroimaging analyses showed that stably accepted adolescents, compared to chronically rejected adolescents, exhibited higher levels of activation in the temporo‐parietal junction, posterior superior temporal sulcus, temporal pole, pre‐supplementary motor area, and anterior insula during costly sharing decisions. These findings demonstrate that stable peer acceptance across childhood is associated with heightened activity in brain regions previously linked to perspective taking and the detection of social norm violations during adolescence, and thereby provide insight into processes underlying the widely established links between peer acceptance and prosocial behavior.

Do-gooder derogation in children: the social costs of generosity

Generosity is greatly valued and admired, but can it sometimes be unappealing? The current study investigated 8- to 10-year-old children’s (N = 128) preference for generous individuals, and the effects of social comparison on their preferences. In Experiment 1, children showed a strong preference for a generous to a stingy child; however, this preference was significantly reduced in a situation that afforded children a comparison of their own (lesser) generosity to that of another child. In Experiment 2, children’s liking for a generous individual was not reduced when that individual was an adult, suggesting that similarity in age influences whether a child engages in social comparison. These findings indicate that, by middle childhood, coming up short in comparison with a peer can decrease one’s liking for a generous individual.

Neural correlates of advantageous and disadvantageous inequity in sharing decisions

Humans have a strong preference for fair distributions of resources. Neuroimaging studies have shown that being treated unfairly coincides with activation in brain regions involved in signaling conflict and negative affect. Less is known about neural responses involved in violating a fairness norm ourselves. Here, we investigated the neural patterns associated with inequity, where participants were asked to choose between an equal split of money and an unequal split that could either maximize their own (advantageous inequity) or another person’s (disadvantageous inequity) earnings. Choosing to divide money unequally, irrespective who benefited from the unequal distribution, was associated with activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Inequity choices that maximized another person’s profits were further associated with activity in the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Taken together, our findings show evidence of a common neural pattern associated with both advantageous and disadvantageous inequity in sharing decisions and additional recruitment of neural circuitry previously linked to the computation of subjective value and reward when violating a fairness norm at the benefit of someone else.

Projecting my envy onto you: neurocognitive mechanisms of an offline emotional egocentricity bias

Humans often project their own beliefs, desires and emotions onto others, indicating an inherent egocentrism. In five studies we investigated the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying emotional egocentricity bias (EEB) and specifically an offline EEB, defined as the projection of one's own tendency to react with a certain emotional response pattern in a given situation onto other people. We used a competitive reaction time game associated with monetary gains and losses that allowed inducing feelings of envy and Schadenfreude. While we found evidence for the first hand experience of envy and Schadenfreude, we also observed an offline bias, that is participants on average projected feelings of envy and Schadenfreude when having to judge others. Importantly the extent of experienced and projected social emotions were highly correlated. This bias was observed when participants were both directly involved and also as an uninvolved party, suggesting the offline bias to be independent of the presently experienced emotion. Under increased time pressure however an online bias emerged whereby participants just projected their presently experienced emotions onto the other. Finally, we show that on the neural level shared neuronal networks underlie the offline EEB at least for envy. Thus, for envy, activity of the same part of anterior insula was sensitive to individual differences both in the experience and the projection of envy. These findings outline the set of circumstances leading to specific types of empathic attribution biases and show that individual differences in the experience of social emotions are predictive of the offline egocentricity bias both on a behavioral as well as a neural level. These data extend present models on the neurocognitive mechanisms of interpersonal understanding in the socio-affective domain.