ArticleFrontiers in psychology2014
The early origins of human charity: developmental changes in preschoolers' sharing with poor and wealthy individuals.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Altruism Prioritization Engine: How Empathic Concern Shapes Children's Inequity Aversion in the Ultimatum Game.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Children consider others' need and reputation in costly sharing decisions.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The effect of time pressure and ego depletion on young children's helping behavior.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Do Chinese preschoolers follow adults' suggestions? The impact of suggestion fairness and advisor familiarity on preschoolers' sharing behavior.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Perceived contact with friends from lower socioeconomic status reduces exclusion based on social class.Developmental science · 2024Article
- Theory of Mind and Moral Decision-Making in the Context of Autism Spectrum Disorder.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2022Article
- Investigating the detection of parent-child relationships in early childhood: The role of partiality in resource distributions.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Children Consider Procedures, Outcomes, and Emotions When Judging the Fairness of Inequality.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Competence-based helping: Children's consideration of need when providing others with help.Journal of experimental child psychology · 2021Article
- Empathy-based tolerance towards poor norm violators in third-party punishment.Experimental brain research · 2021Article
- Less Expectation, Less Pain: Low Wealth Alleviates Sense of Unfairness.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Why do preschoolers perpetuate inequalities? Theoretical perspectives on inequity preferences in the face of emerging concerns for equality.Developmental review : DR · 2020Article
- Article
- Lying, negligence, or lack of knowledge? Children's intention-based moral reasoning about resource claims.Developmental psychology · 2019Article
- Theory of mind is related to children's resource allocations in gender stereotypic contexts.Developmental psychology · 2018Article
- Preschoolers Favor Their Ingroup When Resources Are Limited.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
- 'To the victor go the spoils': Infants expect resources to align with dominance structures.Cognition · 2017Article
- Helping and sharing in preschool children with autism.Experimental brain research · 2017Article
- Theory of Mind and Resource Allocation in the Context of Hidden Inequality.Cognitive development · 2017Article
- Proposers' Economic Status Affects Behavioral and Neural Responses to Unfairness.Frontiers in psychology · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Recent studies have provided evidence that young children already engage in sharing behavior. The underlying social-cognitive mechanisms, however, are still under debate. In particular, it is unclear whether or not young children's sharing is motivated by an appreciation of others' wealth. Manipulating the material needs of recipients in a sharing task (Experiment 1) and a resource allocation task (Experiment 2), we show that 5- but not 3-year-old children share more with poor than wealthy individuals. The 3-year-old children even showed a tendency to behave less selfishly towards the rich, yet not the poor recipient. This suggests that very early instances of sharing behavior are not motivated by a consideration of others' material needs. Moreover, the results show that 5-year-old children were rather inclined to give more to the poor individual than distributing the resources equally, demonstrating that their wish to support the poor overruled the otherwise very prominent inclination to share resources equally. This indicates that charity has strong developmental roots in preschool children.
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