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Young Children Are More Generous When Others Are Aware of Their Actions

Adults frequently employ reputation-enhancing strategies when engaging in prosocial acts, behaving more generously when their actions are likely to be witnessed by others and even more so when the extent of their generosity is made public. This study examined the developmental origins of sensitivity...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Leimgruber, Kristin L., Shaw, Alex, Santos, Laurie R., Olson, Kristina R.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3485147/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23133582
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048292
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author Leimgruber, Kristin L.
Shaw, Alex
Santos, Laurie R.
Olson, Kristina R.
author_facet Leimgruber, Kristin L.
Shaw, Alex
Santos, Laurie R.
Olson, Kristina R.
author_sort Leimgruber, Kristin L.
collection PubMed
description Adults frequently employ reputation-enhancing strategies when engaging in prosocial acts, behaving more generously when their actions are likely to be witnessed by others and even more so when the extent of their generosity is made public. This study examined the developmental origins of sensitivity to cues associated with reputationally motivated prosociality by presenting five-year-olds with the option to provide one or four stickers to a familiar peer recipient at no cost to themselves. We systematically manipulated the recipient’s knowledge of the actor’s choices in two different ways: (1) occluding the recipient’s view of both the actor and the allocation options and (2) presenting allocations in opaque containers whose contents were visible only to the actor. Children were consistently generous only when the recipient was fully aware of the donation options; in all cases in which the recipient was not aware of the donation options, children were strikingly ungenerous. These results demonstrate that five-year-olds exhibit “strategic prosociality,” behaving differentially generous as a function of the amount of information available to the recipient about their actions. These findings suggest that long before they develop a rich understanding of the social significance of reputation or are conscious of complex strategic reasoning, children behave more generously when the details of their prosocial actions are available to others.
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spelling pubmed-34851472012-11-06 Young Children Are More Generous When Others Are Aware of Their Actions Leimgruber, Kristin L. Shaw, Alex Santos, Laurie R. Olson, Kristina R. PLoS One Research Article Adults frequently employ reputation-enhancing strategies when engaging in prosocial acts, behaving more generously when their actions are likely to be witnessed by others and even more so when the extent of their generosity is made public. This study examined the developmental origins of sensitivity to cues associated with reputationally motivated prosociality by presenting five-year-olds with the option to provide one or four stickers to a familiar peer recipient at no cost to themselves. We systematically manipulated the recipient’s knowledge of the actor’s choices in two different ways: (1) occluding the recipient’s view of both the actor and the allocation options and (2) presenting allocations in opaque containers whose contents were visible only to the actor. Children were consistently generous only when the recipient was fully aware of the donation options; in all cases in which the recipient was not aware of the donation options, children were strikingly ungenerous. These results demonstrate that five-year-olds exhibit “strategic prosociality,” behaving differentially generous as a function of the amount of information available to the recipient about their actions. These findings suggest that long before they develop a rich understanding of the social significance of reputation or are conscious of complex strategic reasoning, children behave more generously when the details of their prosocial actions are available to others. Public Library of Science 2012-10-31 /pmc/articles/PMC3485147/ /pubmed/23133582 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048292 Text en © 2012 Leimgruber et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Leimgruber, Kristin L.
Shaw, Alex
Santos, Laurie R.
Olson, Kristina R.
Young Children Are More Generous When Others Are Aware of Their Actions
title Young Children Are More Generous When Others Are Aware of Their Actions
title_full Young Children Are More Generous When Others Are Aware of Their Actions
title_fullStr Young Children Are More Generous When Others Are Aware of Their Actions
title_full_unstemmed Young Children Are More Generous When Others Are Aware of Their Actions
title_short Young Children Are More Generous When Others Are Aware of Their Actions
title_sort young children are more generous when others are aware of their actions
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3485147/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23133582
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048292
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