ArticleScientific reports2021
Human infants can override possessive tendencies to share valued items with others.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- When development constricts our moral circle.Nature human behaviour · 2025Review
- Comparative physiological anthropogeny: exploring molecular underpinnings of distinctly human phenotypes.Physiological reviews · 2023Review
- Why help others? Insights from rodent to human early childhood research.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2023Review
- Prosociality and health: Identification with all humanity is a replicable predictor of prosocial motivation for health behaviors.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Possessiveness toward objects and sharing are competing tendencies that influence dyadic and group interactions within the primate lineage. A distinctive form of sharing in adult Homo sapiens involves active giving of high-valued possessions to others, without an immediate reciprocal benefit. In two Experiments with 19-month-old human infants (N = 96), we found that despite measurable possessive behavior toward their own personal objects (favorite toy, bottle), infants spontaneously gave these items to a begging stranger. Moreover, human infants exhibited this behavior across different types of objects that are relevant to theory (personal objects, sweet food, and common objects)-showing flexible generalizability not evidenced in non-human primates. We combined these data with a previous dataset, yielding a large sample of infants (N = 192), and identified sociocultural factors that may calibrate young infants' sharing of objects with others. The current findings show a proclivity that is rare or absent in our closest living relatives-the capacity to override possessive behavior toward personally valued objects by sharing those same desired objects with others.
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