Young children share more under time pressure than after a delay
Date
16/03/2021Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Adults under time pressure share with others generously, but with more time they act more selfishly. In the current study, we investigated whether young children already operate in this same way, and, if so, whether this changes over the preschool and early school age years. We tested 144 children in three age groups (3-, 5-, and 7-year olds) in a one-shot dictator game: Children were given nine stickers and had the possibility to share stickers with another child who was absent. Children in the Time Pressure condition were instructed to share quickly, whereas children in the Delay condition were instructed to take time and consider their decision carefully. Across ages, children in the Time Pressure condition shared significantly more stickers than children in the Delay condition. Moreover, the longer children waited, the less they shared. Thus, children, like adults, are more prosocial when acting spontaneously than after considering their decision more carefully.
Citation
Ploetner , M , Hepach , R , Over , H , Carpenter , M & Tomasello , M 2021 , ' Young children share more under time pressure than after a delay ' , PLoS One , vol. 16 , no. 3 , e0248121 . https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248121
Publication
PLoS One
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1932-6203Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright: © 2021 Plötner et al. 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 credited.
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