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Lee YE, He S, Warneken F. Children's third-party punishment does not change depending on the prospect of future interaction. J Exp Psychol Gen 2024; 153:608-620. [PMID: 38059961 DOI: 10.1037/xge0001515] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/08/2023]
Abstract
Children pay a cost to punish third parties for unfairness. However, theoretical debates highlight that such behaviors could reflect a strategic attempt to manipulate others in future interactions. The personal deterrence hypothesis claims that punishment is motivated to deter future unfairness toward punishers. Here we tested this hypothesis with a total of n = 248 five- to 10-year-olds. In two experiments, participants witnessed that a divider shared resources either fairly or selfishly with a third party. Participants learned that the same divider (same divider condition) or a new divider (different divider condition) would subsequently decide how to share resources with the participant. If children's punishment is motivated by personal deterrence, they should punish unfairness more often in the same divider condition (vs. different divider). Conversely, if children fear retaliation from dividers, they should punish dividers less often in the same divider condition (vs. different divider). Children intervened by taking resources away from the divider (Experiment 1) or by sending a disapproving or an approving verbal message (Experiment 2). Children were more likely to punish unfair than fair allocations through material punishment and disapproving messages, while being more likely to reward fair than unfair allocations by sending approving messages. However, children did so at the same level regardless of their future divider's identity. We discuss how these results speak to a children's emerging concern with fairness and how it challenges the notion that children punish for self-oriented reasons as suggested by the personal deterrence hypothesis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Susan He
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan
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2
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Amir D, Melnikoff D, Warneken F, Blake PR, Corbit J, Callaghan TC, Barry O, Bowie A, Kleutsch L, Kramer KL, Ross E, Vongsachang H, Wrangham R, McAuliffe K. Computational signatures of inequity aversion in children across seven societies. J Exp Psychol Gen 2023; 152:2882-2896. [PMID: 37155284 DOI: 10.1037/xge0001385] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/10/2023]
Abstract
[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported online in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General on Aug 10 2023 (see record 2023-96713-001). In the original article, there were affiliation errors for the first and 14th authors. The affiliations for Dorsa Amir are Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley; and Department of Psychology, Boston College. The affiliation for Katherine McAuliffe is Department of Psychology, Boston College. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Inequity aversion is an important factor in fairness behavior. Previous work suggests that children show more cross-cultural variation in their willingness to reject allocations that would give them more rewards than their partner-advantageous inequity-as opposed to allocations that would give them less than their partner-disadvantageous inequity. However, as past work has relied solely on children's decisions to accept or reject these offers, the algorithms underlying this pattern of variation remain unclear. Here, we explore the computational signatures of inequity aversion by applying a computational model of decision-making to data from children (N = 807) who played the Inequity Game across seven societies. Specifically, we used drift-diffusion models to formally distinguish evaluative processing (i.e., the computation of the subjective value of accepting or rejecting inequity) from alternative factors such as decision speed and response strategies. Our results suggest that variation in the development of inequity aversion across societies is best accounted for by variation in the drift rate-the direction and strength of the evaluative preference. Our findings underscore the utility of looking beyond decision data to better understand behavioral diversity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
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Affiliation(s)
- Dorsa Amir
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley
| | | | | | - Peter R Blake
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University
| | - John Corbit
- Department of Psychology, Dalhousie University
| | | | - Oumar Barry
- Faculty of Science and Technology for Education and Training, University of Cheikh Anta Diop
| | - Aleah Bowie
- Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University
| | | | | | - Elizabeth Ross
- Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
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3
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Probst S, Nowack A, Warneken F. Children's moral reasoning about self- versus other-benefiting public health measures. J Exp Child Psychol 2023; 229:105623. [PMID: 36696739 PMCID: PMC9868488 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105623] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/24/2022] [Revised: 12/19/2022] [Accepted: 12/31/2022] [Indexed: 01/24/2023]
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced novel public health measures such as masking and social distancing. In adults, framing these behaviors as benefiting others versus the self has been shown to affect people's perceptions of public health measures and willingness to comply. Here we asked whether self- versus other-oriented frames of novel public health measures influence children's endorsement and moral reasoning. Children aged 5 to 10 years viewed hypothetical dilemmas of aliens in which we manipulated the frame (other-oriented or self-oriented) of the prevention behavior and the severity (high or low) of the potential harm. Across two studies (Study 1: N = 48; Study 2: N = 61), results showed that across ages framing the behaviors as other-oriented, but not self-oriented, yielded more positive ratings of individuals who followed the public health measures and more negative ratings of those who did not. Across both frames, children generally endorsed these public health measures when the severity was high. Children used more moralizing concepts in other-oriented frames and were more critical of intentional transgressions over accidental transgressions, demonstrating further evidence that other-oriented frames induce moral reasoning. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these framing effects for sociomoral reasoning and action.
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4
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Grueneisen S, Leimgruber KL, Vogt RL, Warneken F. Prospection and delay of gratification support the development of calculated reciprocity. Cognition 2023; 234:105369. [PMID: 36696795 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105369] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/21/2022] [Revised: 01/05/2023] [Accepted: 01/09/2023] [Indexed: 01/24/2023]
Abstract
Humans frequently benefit others strategically to elicit future cooperation. While such forms of calculated reciprocity are powerful in eliciting cooperative behaviors even among self-interested agents, they depend on advanced cognitive and behavioral capacities such as prospection (representing and planning for future events) and extended delay of gratification. In fact, it has been proposed that these constraints help explain why calculated reciprocity exists in humans and is rare or even absent in other animals. The current study investigated the cognitive foundation of calculated reciprocity by examining its ontogenetic emergence in relation to key aspects of children's cognitive development. Three-to-five-year-old children from the US (N = 72, mostly White, from mixed socioeconomic backgrounds) first completed a cognitive test battery assessing the cognitive capacities hypothesized to be foundational for calculated reciprocity. In a second session, children participated in a calculated reciprocity task in which they could decide how many resources to share with a partner who later had the opportunity to reciprocate (reciprocity condition) and with a partner who could not reciprocate (control condition). Results indicated a steep developmental emergence of calculated reciprocity between 3 and 5 years of age. Further analyses showed that measures of delay of gratification and prospection were important predictors of children's rate of calculated reciprocity, even when controlling for age and after including a measure of verbal ability. By contrast, theory of mind abilities were unrelated to children's reciprocal behavior. This is the first systematic investigation of essential cognitive capacities for calculated reciprocity. We discuss prospection and delay of gratification as two domain-general capacities that are utilized for calculated reciprocity and which could explain developmental as well as species-differences in cooperation.
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5
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Umscheid VA, Smith CE, Warneken F, Gelman SA, Wellman HM. What makes Voldemort tick? Children's and adults' reasoning about the nature of villains. Cognition 2023; 233:105357. [PMID: 36543028 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105357] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/15/2019] [Revised: 12/01/2022] [Accepted: 12/04/2022] [Indexed: 12/23/2022]
Abstract
How do children make sense of antisocial acts committed by evil-doers? We addressed this question in three studies with 434 children (4-12 years) and 277 adults, focused on participants' judgments of both familiar and novel fictional villains and heroes. Study 1 established that children viewed villains' actions and emotions as overwhelmingly negative, suggesting that children's well-documented positivity bias does not prevent their appreciation of extreme forms of villainy. Studies 2 and 3 assessed children's and adults' beliefs regarding heroes' and villains' moral character and true selves, using an array of converging evidence, including: how a character felt inside, whether a character's actions reflected their true self, whether a character's true self could change over time, and how an omniscient machine would judge a character's true self. Across these measures, both children and adults consistently evaluated villains' true selves to be more negative than heroes'. Importantly, at the same time, we also detected an asymmetry in the judgments, wherein villains were more likely than heroes to have a true self that differed from their outward behavior. More specifically, across the ages studied participants more often reported that villains were inwardly good, than that heroes were inwardly bad. Implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed in light of our expanding understanding of the development of true self beliefs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valerie A Umscheid
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043, USA.
| | - Craig E Smith
- Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan, 913 South University Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1190, USA
| | - Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043, USA
| | - Susan A Gelman
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043, USA
| | - Henry M Wellman
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043, USA
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Marshall J, Lee YE, Deutchman P, Wang Z, Horsey CD, Warneken F, McAuliffe K. When not helping is nice: Children's changing evaluations of helping during COVID-19. Dev Psychol 2023; 59:953-962. [PMID: 36634003 DOI: 10.1037/dev0001501] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/13/2023]
Abstract
A key aspect of children's moral and social understanding involves recognizing the value of helpful behaviors. COVID-19 has complicated this process; behaviors generally considered praiseworthy were considered problematic during the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study examined whether 6- to 12-year-olds (N = 228; residing in the United States) adapt their evaluations of helpful behavior in response to shifting norms. Specifically, we presented children with scenarios featuring helpful and unhelpful actions that involved physical interaction (e.g., hugging) or nonphysical interaction (e.g., recruiting a teacher); although all children were tested during the COVID-19 pandemic, stories portrayed individuals either before or during COVID-19. While children generally judged helpfulness positively and unhelpfulness negatively, children exhibited a selective shift in their judgments for COVID-19 scenarios: children considered helpfulness negatively and unhelpfulness positively if helping required physical interaction. These findings demonstrate that children flexibly tune their social evaluations of helping to align with evolving norms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
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7
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Affiliation(s)
- Young‐eun Lee
- Department of Psychology University of Michigan Ann Arbor Michigan USA
- Department of Psychology Columbia University New York New York USA
| | - Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology University of Michigan Ann Arbor Michigan USA
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8
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Abstract
Third-party punishment has been regarded as an important mechanism to promote fairness. Although previous research has shown that children aged 6 and older punish unfair behaviors at a personal cost, it is unknown whether they actually intend to establish equality or whether equality is a mere byproduct of punishment. In this preregistered study, N = 60 five- to 9-year-olds witnessed that an agent made unfair resource allocations to a peer. Children could then decide not only whether to punish but also how much to punish. We found that with age, children's intervention is more likely to equalize outcomes between third parties (e.g., turning 3:1 into 1:1). In conclusion, the egalitarian motive to reduce differences in payoffs could underlie children's punishment over development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
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9
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Li Y, Li P, Chai Q, McAuliffe K, Blake PR, Warneken F, He J. The development of inequity aversion in Chinese children. Cognitive Development 2022. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2021.101151] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
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10
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Grueneisen S, Warneken F. The development of prosocial behavior-from sympathy to strategy. Curr Opin Psychol 2021; 43:323-328. [PMID: 34530222 DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.08.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/01/2021] [Revised: 08/03/2021] [Accepted: 08/04/2021] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
Abstract
Children act prosocially already in their first years of life. Research has shown that this early prosociality is mostly motivated by sympathy for others, but that, over the course of development, children's prosocial behaviors become more varied, more selective, and more motivationally and cognitively complex. Here, we review recent evidence showing that starting at around age 5, children become gradually capable of strategically using prosocial acts as instrumental means to achieve ulterior goals such as to improve their reputation, to be chosen as social partners, to elicit reciprocity, and to navigate interpersonal obligations. Children's sympathy-based prosociality is thus being extended and reshaped into a behavioral repertoire that enables individuals to pursue and balance altruistic, mutualistic, and selfish motives.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sebastian Grueneisen
- University of Michigan, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA; Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Center for Adaptive Rationality, Lentzeallee 94, Berlin, 14195, Germany.
| | - Felix Warneken
- University of Michigan, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA
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11
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12
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Abstract
A key component of economic decisions is the integration of information about reward outcomes and probabilities in selecting between competing options. In many species, risky choice is influenced by the magnitude of available outcomes, probability of success and the possibility of extreme outcomes. Chimpanzees are generally regarded to be risk-seeking. In this study, we examined two aspects of chimpanzees' risk preferences: first, whether setting the value of the non-preferred outcome of a risky option to zero changes chimpanzees’ risk preferences, and second, whether individual risk preferences are stable across two different measures. Across two experiments, we found chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes, n = 23) as a group to be risk-neutral to risk-avoidant with highly stable individual risk preferences. We discuss how the possibility of going empty-handed might reduce chimpanzees' risk-seeking relative to previous studies. This malleability in risk preferences as a function of experimental parameters and individual differences raises interesting questions about whether it is appropriate or helpful to categorize a species as a whole as risk-seeking or risk-avoidant. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Existence and prevalence of economic behaviours among non-human primates’.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stefanie Keupp
- Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, University Road, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK.,Experimental Psychology, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AP, UK
| | - Sebastian Grueneisen
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043, USA.,Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, 14195 Berlin, Germany
| | - Elliot A Ludvig
- Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, University Road, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
| | - Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043, USA
| | - Alicia P Melis
- Experimental Psychology, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AP, UK
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13
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Bernhard RM, Martin JW, Warneken F. Why do children punish? Fair outcomes matter more than intent in children's second- and third-party punishment. J Exp Child Psychol 2020; 200:104909. [PMID: 32866656 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104909] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/18/2019] [Revised: 01/13/2020] [Accepted: 05/13/2020] [Indexed: 10/23/2022]
Abstract
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.
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Affiliation(s)
- Regan M Bernhard
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 01238, USA.
| | - Justin W Martin
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 01238, USA
| | - Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 01238, USA
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14
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Abstract
Advantageous inequity aversion emerges relatively late in child development, yet the mechanisms explaining its late emergence are poorly understood. Here, we ask whether children begin to reject advantageous inequity, a costly form of fairness, once reputational concerns are in place. Specifically, we examine the role of peer monitoring in promoting fair behavior. In Study 1 (N = 212 pairs; Ages 6 to 9), we test whether children are less likely to reject advantageous allocations depending on who is aware of their behavior. Results show that children are more likely to accept advantageous allocations when their peer partner is unaware of their advantage. In Study 2 (N = 134 pairs; Ages 8 and 9), we show that this effect is driven specifically by whether the affected peer partners can see the allocation and not by whether third-party peer observers witness the decision. Together, these results shed light on the factors influencing fairness development in childhood and, more specifically, suggest that advantageous inequity aversion is influenced by a desire to appear fair to those getting the short end of the stick. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
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16
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Warneken F, Sebastián-Enesco C, Benjamin NE, Pieloch KA. Pay to play: Children's emerging ability to use acts of generosity for selfish ends. J Exp Child Psychol 2019; 188:104675. [PMID: 31446310 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104675] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/09/2019] [Revised: 07/22/2019] [Accepted: 07/23/2019] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Adults will offer favors to advance their standing and solicit a favor in return, using ostensibly prosocial acts strategically for selfish ends. Here we assessed the developmental emergence of such strategic behaviors in which individuals are generous to elicit future reciprocation from others. In a novel experimental paradigm with children aged 3 to 7 years, we tested whether children are willing to share more valuable resources when this act could prompt subsequent reciprocation. In an Experimental condition, children could share a more attractive or less attractive resource with a person who they knew would subsequently choose to play a game with either the children or another individual. In the Control condition, children knew the person would play alone. Across two studies, we found that over repeated trials, 5- and 7-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, learned to share more valuable resources in the Experimental condition than in the Control condition. This shows that older age groups were able to quickly learn how to influence the subsequent partner choice in a novel situation. We address theoretical questions about the various types of reciprocity as being supported by different psychological mechanisms and discuss whether the current results could be explained by children's emerging ability for future-directed thinking.
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Affiliation(s)
- Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
| | | | - Natalie E Benjamin
- Department of Psychology, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 53233, USA
| | - Kerrie A Pieloch
- Department of Psychology, Suffolk University, Boston, MA 02108, USA
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17
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Abstract
Mutually beneficial interactions often require trust that others will reciprocate. Such interpersonal trust is foundational to evolutionarily unique aspects of human social behaviour, such as economic exchange. In adults, interpersonal trust is often assessed using the 'trust game', in which a lender invests resources in a trustee who may or may not repay the loan. This game captures two crucial elements of economic exchange: the potential for greater mutual benefits by trusting in others, and the moral hazard that others may betray that trust. While adults across cultures can trust others, little is known about the developmental origins of this crucial cooperative ability. We developed the first version of the trust game for use with young children that addresses these two components of trust. Across three experiments, we demonstrate that 4- and 6-year-olds recognize opportunities to invest in others, sharing more when reciprocation is possible than in a context measuring pure generosity. Yet, children become better with age at investing in trustworthy over untrustworthy partners, indicating that this cooperative skill emerges later in ontogeny. Together, our results indicate that young children can engage in complex economic exchanges involving judgements about interpersonal trust and show increasing sensitivity to appropriate partners over development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexandra G Rosati
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.,Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
| | - Natalie Benjamin
- Department of Psychology, Marquette University, 604 N 16th Street, Cramer 307, Milwaukee, WI 53233, USA
| | - Kerrie Pieloch
- Department of Psychology, Suffolk University, 73 Tremont 8th Floor, Boston, MA 02108, USA
| | - Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
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18
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Leech KA, Leimgruber K, Warneken F, Rowe ML. Conversation about the future self improves preschoolers' prospection abilities. J Exp Child Psychol 2019; 181:110-120. [PMID: 30711299 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.12.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/25/2018] [Revised: 12/19/2018] [Accepted: 12/20/2018] [Indexed: 10/27/2022]
Abstract
Prospection, the ability to engage in future-oriented thinking and decision making, begins to develop during the preschool years yet remains far from adult-like. One specific challenge for children of this age is with regard to thinking and reasoning about their future selves. Drawing from work indicating the importance of adult-child conversation in language and cognitive development, the current study examined the extent to which conversations about the future and the self may facilitate preschool-aged children's prospective thinking. The participants, 4- and 5-year-old children (N = 68), were randomly assigned to read books surrounding one of four topics with an adult experimenter: their present self, their future self, another child's present self, or another child's future self. Children whose conversations were centered on their future selves outperformed other children in the sample on a battery of prospection assessments taken immediately after the manipulation. Of the three prospection assessments administered, the manipulation had the strongest effect on children's prospective memories. Results are discussed in terms of the role that everyday conversation can play in fostering children's cognitive development during the early childhood years.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kathryn A Leech
- Harvard University Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
| | - Kristi Leimgruber
- Department of Psychology, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA 17604, USA
| | - Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
| | - Meredith L Rowe
- Harvard University Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
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19
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Kajanus A, McAuliffe K, Warneken F, Blake PR. Children’s fairness in two Chinese schools: A combined ethnographic and experimental study. J Exp Child Psychol 2019; 177:282-296. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.08.012] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/12/2017] [Revised: 08/28/2018] [Accepted: 08/30/2018] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
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20
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Liu S, Gonzalez G, Warneken F. Worth the wait: Children trade off delay and reward in self‐ and other‐benefiting decisions. Dev Sci 2018; 22:e12702. [DOI: 10.1111/desc.12702] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/09/2017] [Accepted: 05/22/2018] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Shari Liu
- Department of Psychology Harvard University Cambridge Massachusetts
| | - Gorana Gonzalez
- Department of Psychology Boston College Boston Massachusetts
| | - Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology University of Michigan Ann Arbor Michigan
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21
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Hepach R, Warneken F. Editorial overview: Early development of prosocial behavior: Revealing the foundation of human prosociality. Curr Opin Psychol 2018; 20:iv-viii. [PMID: 29510908 DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.02.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Robert Hepach
- Department of Research Methods in Early Child Development, Leipzig University, 04109 Leipzig, Germany.
| | - Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
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22
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Affiliation(s)
- Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
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23
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Aime H, Broesch T, Aknin LB, Warneken F. Evidence for proactive and reactive helping in two- to five-year-olds from a small-scale society. PLoS One 2017; 12:e0187787. [PMID: 29141009 PMCID: PMC5687751 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187787] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/24/2016] [Accepted: 10/25/2017] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Humans are unique in their propensity for helping. Not only do we help others in need by reacting to their requests, we also help proactively by assisting in the absence of a request. Proactive helping requires the actor to detect the need for help, recognize the intention of the other, and remedy the situation. Very little is known about the development of this social phenomenon beyond an urban, industrialized setting. We examined helping in nineteen two- to five-year old children in small-scale rural villages of Vanuatu. In the experimental condition, the intentions of the experimenter were made salient, whereas in the control condition they were ambiguous. Children helped more often in the experimental compared to the control condition, suggesting that the propensity to monitor others' goals and act accordingly can be detected in different cultural contexts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hilary Aime
- Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
| | - Tanya Broesch
- Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
| | - Lara B. Aknin
- Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
| | - Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America
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Abstract
Across all cultures, humans engage in cooperative activities that can be as simple as preparing a meal or sharing food with others and as complex as playing in an orchestra or donating to charity. Although intraspecific cooperation exists among many other animal species, only humans engage in such a wide array of cooperative interaction and participate in large-scale cooperation that extends beyond kin and even includes strangers.
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Blake PR, Corbit J, Callaghan TC, Warneken F. Give as I give: Adult influence on children’s giving in two cultures. J Exp Child Psychol 2016; 152:149-160. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2016.07.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 34] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/19/2015] [Revised: 07/21/2016] [Accepted: 07/22/2016] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
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Abstract
The transition to a cooked diet represents an important shift in human ecology and evolution. Cooking requires a set of sophisticated cognitive abilities, including causal reasoning, self-control and anticipatory planning. Do humans uniquely possess the cognitive capacities needed to cook food? We address whether one of humans' closest relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), possess the domain-general cognitive skills needed to cook. Across nine studies, we show that chimpanzees: (i) prefer cooked foods; (ii) comprehend the transformation of raw food that occurs when cooking, and generalize this causal understanding to new contexts; (iii) will pay temporal costs to acquire cooked foods; (iv) are willing to actively give up possession of raw foods in order to transform them; and (v) can transport raw food as well as save their raw food in anticipation of future opportunities to cook. Together, our results indicate that several of the fundamental psychological abilities necessary to engage in cooking may have been shared with the last common ancestor of apes and humans, predating the control of fire.
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Affiliation(s)
- Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Alexandra G Rosati
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
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29
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Abstract
Research on distributive justice indicates that preschool-age children take issues of equity and merit into account when distributing desirable items, but that they often prefer to see desirable items allocated equally in third-party tasks. By contrast, less is known about the development of retributive justice. In a study with 4- to 10-year-old children (n = 123) and adults (n = 93), we directly compared the development of reasoning about distributive and retributive justice. We measured the amount of rewards or punishments that participants allocated to recipients who differed in the amount of good or bad things they had done. We also measured judgments about collective rewards and punishments. We found that the developmental trajectory of thinking about retributive justice parallels that of distributive justice. The 4- to 5-year-olds were the most likely to prefer equal distributions of both rewarding and aversive consequences; older children and adults preferred deservingness-based allocations. The 4- to 5-year-olds were also most likely to judge collective rewards and punishments as fair; this tendency declined with increasing age. Our results also highlight the extent to which the notion of desert influences thinking about distributive and retributive justice; desert was considered equally when participants allocated reward and punishments, but in judgments about collective discipline, participants focused more on desert in cases of punishment compared with reward. We discuss our results in relation to theories about preferences for equality versus equity, theories about how desert is differentially weighed across distributive and retributive justice, and the literature on moral development and fairness.
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Affiliation(s)
- Craig E Smith
- Center for Human Growth and Development, University of Michigan
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Abstract
In this reply to Ceci, Burd, and Helm, we discuss future directions for developmental research to (1) study the motivations underlying white lies and (2) how to classify lies that reflect other-regard and self-interest simultaneously.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Emily Orlins
- Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
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31
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Abstract
When confronted with inequality, human children and adults sacrifice personal gain to reduce the pay-offs of other individuals, exhibiting apparently spiteful motivations. By contrast, sacrifice of personal gain by non-human animals is often interpreted as frustration. Spite may thus be a uniquely human motivator. However, to date, no empirical study has demonstrated that psychological spite actually drives human behaviour, leaving the motivation for inequity aversion unclear. Here, we ask whether 4- to 9-year-old children and adults reject disadvantageous inequity (less for self, more for peer) out of spite or frustration. We show that children, but not adults, are more likely to reject disadvantageous allocations when doing so deprives their peer of a better reward (spite) than when their peer has already received the better reward (frustration). Spiteful motivations are thus present early in childhood and may be a species-specific component of humans' developing cooperative and competitive behaviour.
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Affiliation(s)
- Katherine McAuliffe
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8205, USA Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
| | - Peter R Blake
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
| | - Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
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32
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Affiliation(s)
- Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology; Harvard University; Cambridge MA USA
| | - Emily Orlins
- Department of Psychology; Harvard University; Cambridge MA USA
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McAuliffe K, Jordan JJ, Warneken F. Costly third-party punishment in young children. Cognition 2015; 134:1-10. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.08.013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 119] [Impact Index Per Article: 13.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/20/2013] [Revised: 08/18/2014] [Accepted: 08/21/2014] [Indexed: 10/24/2022]
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Sebastián-Enesco C, Warneken F. The shadow of the future: 5-Year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, adjust their sharing in anticipation of reciprocation. J Exp Child Psychol 2015; 129:40-54. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2014.08.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 58] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/19/2014] [Revised: 08/17/2014] [Accepted: 08/20/2014] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
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Blake PR, McAuliffe K, Warneken F. The developmental origins of fairness: the knowledge–behavior gap. Trends Cogn Sci 2014; 18:559-61. [DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2014.08.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 96] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/19/2014] [Revised: 08/07/2014] [Accepted: 08/12/2014] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
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Smith CE, Warneken F. Does it always feel good to get what you want? Young children differentiate between material and wicked desires. Br J Dev Psychol 2014; 32:3-16. [PMID: 25284361 DOI: 10.1111/bjdp.12018] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/01/2013] [Revised: 07/11/2013] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
One line of research on children's attributions of guilt suggests that 3-year-olds attribute negative emotion to self-serving victimizers, slightly older children attribute happiness, and with increasing age, attributions become negative again (i.e., a three-step model; Yuill et al., 1996, Br. J. Dev. Psychol., 14, 457). Another line of research provides reason to expect that 3-year-olds may be predisposed to view self-serving moral transgression as leading to positive emotion; this is a linear developmental model in which emotion attributions to transgressors become increasingly negative over the course of childhood (e.g., Nunner-Winkler & Sodian, 1988, Child Dev., 59, 1323). However, key differences in methodology make it difficult to compare across these findings. The present study was designed to address this problem. We asked how 3- to 9-year-old children (n = 111) reason about transgression scenarios that involve satisfying wicked desires (wanting to cause harm and doing so successfully) versus material desires (wanting an object and getting it successfully via harmful behaviour). Three-year-old children reasoned differently about desire and emotion across these two types of transgressions, attributing negative emotion in the case of wicked desires and positive emotion in the case of material desires. This pattern of emotion attribution by young children provides new information about how young children process information about desires and emotions in the moral domain, and it bridges a gap in the existing literature on this topic.
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Affiliation(s)
- Craig E Smith
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
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Kim S, Harris PL, Warneken F. Is it okay to tell? Children's judgements about information disclosure. Br J Dev Psychol 2014; 32:291-304. [DOI: 10.1111/bjdp.12040] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/09/2013] [Revised: 02/12/2014] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Sunae Kim
- Harvard University; Cambridge Massachusetts USA
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Abstract
Adults and children are willing to sacrifice personal gain to avoid both disadvantageous and advantageous inequity. These two forms of inequity aversion follow different developmental trajectories, with disadvantageous inequity aversion emerging around 4 years and advantageous inequity aversion emerging around 8 years. Although inequity aversion is assumed to be specific to situations where resources are distributed among individuals, the role of social context has not been tested in children. Here, we investigated the influence of two aspects of social context on inequity aversion in 4- to 9-year-old children: (1) the role of the experimenter distributing rewards and (2) the presence of a peer with whom rewards could be shared. Experiment 1 showed that children rejected inequity at the same rate, regardless of whether the experimenter had control over reward allocations. This indicates that children's decisions are based upon reward allocations between themselves and a peer and are not attempts to elicit more favorable distributions from the experimenter. Experiment 2 compared rejections of unequal reward allocations in children interacting with or without a peer partner. When faced with a disadvantageous distribution, children frequently rejected a smaller reward when a larger reward was visible, even if no partner would obtain the larger reward. This suggests that nonsocial factors partly explain disadvantageous inequity rejections. However, rejections of disadvantageous distributions were higher when the larger amount would go to a peer, indicating that social context enhances disadvantageous inequity aversion. By contrast, children rejected advantageous distributions almost exclusively in the social context. Therefore, advantageous inequity aversion appears to be genuinely social, highlighting its potential relevance for the development of fairness concerns. By comparing social and nonsocial factors, this study provides a detailed picture of the expression of inequity aversion in human ontogeny and raises questions about the function and evolution of inequity aversion in humans.
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Affiliation(s)
- Katherine McAuliffe
- Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
| | - Peter R. Blake
- Department of Psychology, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
| | - Grace Kim
- History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
| | - Richard W. Wrangham
- Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
| | - Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
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Köymen B, Lieven E, Engemann DA, Rakoczy H, Warneken F, Tomasello M. Children's Norm Enforcement in Their Interactions With Peers. Child Dev 2013; 85:1108-1122. [DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12178] [Citation(s) in RCA: 32] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Bahar Köymen
- Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
| | - Elena Lieven
- Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
- The University of Manchester
| | - Denis A. Engemann
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine-Cognitive Neuroscience (INM-3)
- University Hospital of Cologne
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Warneken F, Tomasello M. The emergence of contingent reciprocity in young children. J Exp Child Psychol 2013; 116:338-50. [PMID: 23917162 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2013.06.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 83] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/27/2013] [Revised: 06/04/2013] [Accepted: 06/07/2013] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
Contingent reciprocity is important in theories of the evolution of human cooperation, but it has been very little studied in ontogeny. We gave 2- and 3-year-old children the opportunity to either help or share with a partner after that partner either had or had not previously helped or shared with the children. Previous helping did not influence children's helping. In contrast, previous sharing by the partner led to greater sharing in 3-year-olds but not in 2-year-olds. These results do not support theories claiming either that reciprocity is fundamental to the origins of children's prosocial behavior or that it is irrelevant. Instead, they support an account in which children's prosocial behavior emerges spontaneously but is later mediated by reciprocity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
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Abstract
Human adults will sometimes help without being asked to help, including in situations in which the helpee is oblivious to the problem and thus provides no communicative or behavioral cues that intervention is necessary. Some theoretical models argue that these acts of 'proactive helping' are an important and possibly human-specific form of prosociality. Two experiments examined whether young children proactively help in a situation where an adult did not provide any concurrent behavioral cues that help was needed. Specifically, in Experiment 1 an experimenter either dropped an object without noticing (experimental condition) or on purpose (control). Even though children were bystanders engaged in their own task, they spontaneously intervened by helping instrumentally in the experimental condition in the absence of concurrent behavioral cues from the actor (significantly more often than in the control condition). These acts increased significantly from 21 to 31months of age, probably reflecting children's emerging social-cognitive capacities to represent goal-directed action. Experiment 2 replicated proactive helping in 2-year-olds in a more closely matched comparison in which in both experimental and control conditions the actor did not notice the accident, and children thus had to infer whether help was needed from the actor's previous responses alone. This result shows that children are able to infer a need for intervention on concurrent situational cues, without behavioral or communicative cues by the helpee. These results indicate that proactive prosociality might be a characteristic of early human ontogeny, emerging in children as young as two years of age.
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Affiliation(s)
- Felix Warneken
- Harvard University, Department of Psychology, 33 Kirkland St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
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Lallee S, Pattacini U, Lemaignan S, Lenz A, Melhuish C, Natale L, Skachek S, Hamann K, Steinwender J, Sisbot EA, Metta G, Guitton J, Alami R, Warnier M, Pipe T, Warneken F, Dominey PF. Towards a Platform-Independent Cooperative Human Robot Interaction System: III An Architecture for Learning and Executing Actions and Shared Plans. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2012. [DOI: 10.1109/tamd.2012.2199754] [Citation(s) in RCA: 37] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/07/2022]
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Rosati AG, Herrmann E, Kaminski J, Krupenye C, Melis AP, Schroepfer K, Tan J, Warneken F, Wobber V, Hare B. Assessing the psychological health of captive and wild apes: a response to Ferdowsian et al. (2011). ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2012; 127:329-36. [PMID: 22889365 DOI: 10.1037/a0029144] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
As many studies of cognition and behavior involve captive animals, assessing any psychological impact of captive conditions is an important goal for comparative researchers. Ferdowsian and colleagues (2011) sought to address whether captive chimpanzees show elevated signs of psychopathology relative to wild apes. They modified a checklist of diagnostic criteria for major depression and posttraumatic stress disorder in humans, and applied these criteria to various captive and wild chimpanzee populations. We argue that measures derived from human diagnostic criteria are not a powerful tool for assessing the psychological health of nonverbal animals. In addition, we highlight certain methodological drawbacks of the specific approach used by Ferdowsian and colleagues (2011). We propose that research should (1) focus on objective behavioral criteria that account for species-typical behaviors and can be reliably identified across populations; (2) account for population differences in rearing history when comparing how current environment impacts psychological health in animals; and (3) focus on how changes in current human practices can improve the well-being of both captive and wild animals.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexandra G Rosati
- Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
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Abstract
This study investigated young children's commitment to a joint goal by assessing whether peers in collaborative activities continue to collaborate until all received their rewards. Forty-eight 2.5- and 3.5-year-old children worked on an apparatus dyadically. One child got access to her reward early. For the partner to benefit as well, this child had to continue to collaborate even though there was no further reward available to her. The study found that 3.5-year-olds, but not 2.5-year-olds, eagerly assisted their unlucky partner. They did this less readily in a noncollaborative control condition. A second study confirmed that 2.5-year-old children understood the task structure. These results suggest that children begin to appreciate the normative dimensions of collaborative activities during the 3rd year of life.
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Affiliation(s)
- Katharina Hamann
- Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
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