Inferring One’s Own Prosociality Through Choice: Giving Preschoolers Costly Prosocial Choices Increases Subsequent Sharing Behavior

Inferring One’s Own Prosociality Through Choice: Giving Preschoolers Costly Prosocial Choices Increases Subsequent Sharing Behavior Nadia Chernyak (nc98@cornell.edu) & Tamar Kushnir (tk397@cornell.edu) Department of Human Development, Martha Van Rensselaer Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 USA Abstract Prosociality emerges early in ontogeny, but the mechanisms driving its early-emergence are not well understood. We propose that the experience of choice is tied to the expression of children’s prosocial behavior. In Experiment 1, preschoolers shared with a puppet by either making a Costly Choice (giving a resource they could have kept for themselves), Non-Costly Choice (giving a resource that would otherwise be thrown away), or No Choice. Subsequent prosociality was measured by allowing children to share with a new puppet. While most children shared initially, children who were given costly choices shared more with the new puppet. Experiment 2 replicated this result using a different manipulation for Costly vs. Non-Costly choices. Experiment 3 found that preschoolers were more likely to infer that actions are intentional when they are costly. Results suggest a prosocial construal hypothesis: that children rationally infer their prosociality through making difficult, autonomous choices. Keywords: cognitive preschoolers development; choice; altruism; Introduction People very rapidly acquire remarkable prosocial tendencies. By the second to third year of life, children help others complete their goals (Warneken & Tomasello, 2006), share toys (Schmidt & Sommerville, 2008; Svetlova, Nichols, & Brownell, 2010), sympathize with those who are harmed (Vaish, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2009) or are in distress (Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, & Wagner, 1992), and punish those who harm others (Dunfield & Kuhlmeier, 2010; Vaish, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2010; Vaish, Missana, & Tomasello, 2011). But how children acquire such tendencies remains an understudied empirical question. Here, we explore the possibility that having and making choices encourages young children’s prosocial behavior. One potential mechanism for the expression of prosocial behavior is through past experience with prosocial action (Staub, 1971). Self-perception theory (see Beaman, Cole, Preston, Klenty, & Steblay, 1983; Bem, 1967; Eisenberg, Cialdini, McCreath, & Shell, 1987; Lepper, 1973) suggests that individuals are likely to act in congruence with their past actions because of a desire to stay self-consistent. Thus, through acting prosocially, children may be forming a cognitive representation of what “the self” is like, and acting in accordance with that representation (Freedman & Fraser, 1966; Grusec, Kuczynski, Rushton, & Simutis 1978; Grusec & Redler, 1980). Importantly, however, children evaluate their own actions not simply by their occurrence, but also by the contexts under which they occur (Warneken & Tomasello, 2008). Here we explore one important context critical to evaluating prosocial behavior: that of choice. Choice differs from action in that it involves the contrast between actions performed and alternative actions not performed. For example, I evaluate Bob, who gave $5 to charity but could have kept it for himself (had an alternative) more positively than Jim, who accidentally dropped $5 into the hands of a homeless person (had no alternative). In fact, we often go beyond evaluating choice in absolute terms (having vs. not having choice) to also consider degree of costliness of the alternatives. To extend the above example, I would consider Bob more generous if his choice was to give away his last $5 than if his choice was to give away $5 out of his last $100. Thus, both the presence and the costliness of choice influence how we evaluate others. No study to our knowledge has addressed whether choice plays a causal role in young children’s own prosocial behavior. In this work, we asked whether making costly choices increases young children’s prosociality. Specifically, we hypothesized that the contrast between actions chosen and alternative actions not chosen influences children’s later prosocial behavior above and beyond the prosociality of the actions themselves. We allowed preschool-aged children (3-4 year-olds) to perform a prosocial action: allocating a limited and desired resource to a puppet who was feeling sad. We systematically manipulated the presence and magnitude of alternative actions (non-prosocial actions) that children could also undertake. We were interested in how the presence and valence of these alternative actions affected children’s subsequent prosociality. Subsequent prosociality was measured by allowing children to then make a new prosocial action towards a different puppet. Experiment 1 In Experiment 1, children were presented with an attractive and limited resource: 1 star sticker that they could give to a puppet (“Doggie”) who was described as feeling sad. We manipulated children’s experience of choice by allowing children to either make a Costly Choice (give the sticker to Doggie instead of keeping it for themselves), Non-Costly Choice (give the sticker to Doggie instead of having the experimenter put the sticker away), or No Choice (instructed to give the sticker to Doggie). As such, all children were given the option between (a) a positive