House and colleagues 11 tested 3–8-year-old children with peers (i.e., familiar children from their classroom) as recipients in both the prosocial and the costly sharing game. Consequently, in this game, the donor has to forego maximizing his or her own payoff in order to benefit the recipient.īrownell and colleagues 10 found that in a cost-free prosocial game, 2-year-old children only showed a preference for resource distributions that benefitted an adult recipient, when the recipient verbally expressed a desire for the reward. In comparison, in a costly sharing game, the donors are required to choose between the altruistic 1/1 option and a 2/0 option, which would deliver two reward items to them. In this game there are no costs for the donor, as he or she will always receive one reward item, regardless of their choice. prosocial choice task) 9 the donors can choose between one option, where they receive a reward and simultaneously deliver a reward to the recipient (1/1 option), and a second option, where only they themselves receive a reward (1/0 option). the donor) is presented with two options that have different payoffs for him- or herself and a partner (i.e. One way to experimentally assess children’s propensity to share with others are resource allocation paradigms inspired by behavioural economics: in these “games” a participant (i.e. Sharing resources with others develops even later in childhood, as children’s prosocial tendencies increase with experience and they are more strongly influenced by social norms 7, 8. By the age of three, children start behaving more selectively by punishing or withdrawing cooperation from uncooperative social partners 6. At this age, prosocial behaviour is indiscriminate of the other’s identity and limited to simple helping tasks. Already by the age of 14 months infants help in simple tasks, such as handing an experimenter an out-of-reach object 5. These studies suggest that prosocial behaviour emerges early in human ontogeny, with some researchers arguing that it forms a biological predisposition 3, 4. 646) develops during ontogeny has recently become a hot topic of developmental psychology – so much so that more than 20% of studies on prosocial behaviour in children have been published in the last 6 years 2. “voluntary behavior intended to benefit another” 1, p.

To help, cooperate, and share with others are central aspects of human societies, and they range from large-scale cooperation to small acts of charity. Our results highlight the importance of considering social, as well as physiological factors when investigating prosocial behaviour in children. However, they did so irrespectively of whether they were paired with a recipient or not.

Further, their social status in the classroom influenced their choices: children with fewer interaction partners chose the “prosocial” option more often than more ‘popular’ children. We found that children behaved prosocially, and that their prosocial tendencies were negatively correlated with prenatal androgen exposure i.e., children with high 2D:4D ratios (reflecting low prenatal androgen exposure) acted more prosocially than children with low 2D:4D ratios. They could decide between a “selfish” (i.e., one sticker for themselves) and a “prosocial” option (i.e., one sticker for themselves and one for the receiver) and we tested whether friendship, social status and prenatal androgen exposure (approximated by the 2nd to 4th digit ratio 2D:4D) influenced children’s prosocial choices. Here we used a resource allocation paradigm to test prosocial behaviour in 6–9-year-old school children. However, questions about which factors modify prosocial behaviour at that age remain understudied. Prosocial behaviour (i.e., voluntary behaviour intended to benefit another) seems to be fully developed in children by the age of 6 years.

2d 4d ratio motor skill jamaica