Title: Being sticker rich: Numerical context influences children's sharing behavior
Abstract: Young children spontaneously share resources with anonymous recipients, but little is known about the specific circumstances that promote or hinder these prosocial tendencies. Children (ages 3-11) received a small (12) or large (30) number of stickers, and were then given the opportunity to share their windfall with either one or multiple anonymous recipients (Dictator Game). Whether a child chose to share or not varied as a function of age, but was uninfluenced by numerical context. Moreover, children's giving was consistent with a proportion- based account, such that children typically donated a similar proportion (but different absolute number) of the resources given to them, regardless of whether they originally received a small or large windfall. The proportion of resources donated, however, did vary based on the number of recipients with whom they were allowed to share, such that on average, children shared more when there were more recipients available, particularly when they had more resources, suggesting they take others into consideration when making prosocial decisions. Finally, results indicated that a child's gender also predicted sharing behavior, with males generally sharing more resources than females. Together, findings suggest that the numerical contexts under which children are asked to share, as well as the quantity of resources that they have to share, may interact to promote (or hinder) altruistic behaviors throughout childhood. © 2015 Posid et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.