ArticleScientific reports2017
Young children display an increase in prosocial donating in response to an upwards shift in generosity by a same-aged peer.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Social status and prenatal testosterone exposure assessed via second-to-fourth digit ratio affect 6-9-year-old children's prosocial choices.Scientific reports · 2018Trial
- Preschoolers' prosocial behavior in groups-Testing effects of dominance, popularity, and friendship.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Food sharing with friends and acquaintances: A study in preschool boys and girls.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- The Neural and Psychological Processes of Peer-Influenced Online Donation Decision: An Event-Related Potential Study.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- The Effects of Prosocial Cartoon Examples on Children's Donating Behavior.Psychology research and behavior management · 2021Article
- Not by the same token: A female orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) is selectively prosocial.Primates; journal of primatology · 2020Article
- The Development of Cumulative Cultural Learning.Annual review of developmental psychology · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Adult humans frequently engage in the reciprocal exchange of resources with other individuals. However, despite the important role that reciprocity plays in maintaining co-operative exchange we know relatively little of when, and how, reciprocity develops. We first asked whether pairs of young children (M = 74 months) would engage in direct reciprocity in a 'prosocial choice test' where a donor could select either a higher, or a lower, value reward (1v 2) for a partner at no cost to themselves (1v 1). In a subsequent retest we asked, for the first time, whether young children increase their level of prosocial donating in response to an upwards shift in generosity from an initially selfish partner. In order to determine whether interacting with another child was fundamental to the development of reciprocity we included a novel yoked non-agent condition. The results suggest that the children were engaging in a calculated form of reciprocity where the prior behavior of their child partner influenced their subsequent level of donation days after the initial exchange. Crucially we show that the children were not influenced by the value of the rewards received per se, rather selection by a human agent was key to reciprocity.
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