Preschoolers’ Selﬁsh Sharing Is Reduced by Prior - IA de Investigación especializada en el MIT

El intercambio egoísta de los niños en edad preescolar se reduce en función del pasado
Experience With Proportional Generosity

1
Nadia Chernyak

, Bertilia Y. Trieu

2,3

2
, and Tamar Kushnir

1Boston University and Boston College

2Universidad de Cornell

3Columbia University

Palabras clave: prosocial behavior, sharing, preschoolers, proportional reasoning

un acceso abierto

diario

ABSTRACTO

Young children make sophisticated social and normative inferences based on proportional
reasoning. We explored the possibility that proportional cues also help children learn from
and about their own generosity. Across two experiments, 3- to 4-year-olds had the
opportunity to give either 1 de 4, 1 de 3, 1 de 2, o 1 de 1 of their resources to an individual in
need. We then measured children’s subsequent prosociality by looking at sharing behavior
with a new individual. The more proportionally generous the initial action, the less likely
children were to share selﬁshly in the second phase. Our results suggest that children make
sense of their own actions using proportional cues and that giving children experience with
difﬁcult, prosocial actions increases the likelihood of their recurrence.

Young children show an early-developing capacity to be prosocial toward others: por
the preschool age, children share valuable resources with both friends and strangers (moore,
2009; Rheingold, Hay, & Oeste, 1976; Schmidt & Sommerville, 2011), comfort those in
need (Dunﬁeld, Kuhlmeier, O’Connell, & kelly, 2011), and help others achieve their goals
(Warneken & Tomasello, 2006). Al mismo tiempo, sin embargo, young children have trouble
sharing personal possessions (Eisenberg-Berg, Haake, Hand, & Sadalla, 1979), giving away
high-value items (Blake & Rand, 2010), and splitting resources fairly (Herrero, Blake, & harris,
2013). Hasta la fecha, the mechanisms and situations that encourage prosocial (vs. selﬁsh) action are
not entirely well understood.

Prior studies have suggested that children construct ideas about themselves through their
prior experiences. In a recent study (Chernyak & Kushnir, 2013), preschoolers were given the
chance either to behave prosocially at a cost to themselves (told they could keep a sticker for
themselves or give it to a puppet) or at no cost to themselves (told they could throw the sticker
out or give it to a puppet). Although both groups of children initially behaved prosocially,
children who were given the opportunity to do so at a cost to themselves went on to share a
greater number of stickers during the next phase of the study. This study suggests that inducing
costly sharing serves as one way through which children form ideas about their own prosocial-
idad (see also Gneezy, Imas, Marrón, nelson, & norton, 2012, for a similar demonstration with
adultos). In another demonstration, Warneken and Tomasello (2008) allowed 20-month-old
children the opportunity to behave prosocially (help an adult retrieve an out of reach ob-
ject). One group of children was rewarded materially for doing so, another was given social
praise, and a third group was given no feedback or reward. Just as children who made costly
choices (Chernyak & Kushnir, 2013), children who performed actions with no material reward
were the most likely to continue being prosocial. In further support of the idea that context

Citación: Chernyak, NORTE., Trieu, B. y., &
Kushnir, t. (2017). Preschoolers’
selﬁsh sharing is reduced by prior
experience with proportional
generosity. Mente abierta: Discoveries in
Ciencia cognitiva, 1(1), 42–52.
doi:10.1162/opmi_a_00004

DOI:
http://doi.org/10.1162/opmi_a_00004

Materiales suplementarios:
www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/suppl/
10.1162/opmi_a_00004,
doi.org/10.7910/DVN/NPXDPR

Recibió: 16 Junio 2016
Aceptado: 25 Agosto 2016

Conflicto de intereses: Los autores
declare no competing interests.

Autor correspondiente:
Nadia Chernyak
chernyak@bu.edu; chernyan@bc.edu

Derechos de autor: © 2017
Instituto de Tecnología de Massachusetts
Publicado bajo Creative Commons
Atribución 4.0 Internacional
(CC POR 4.0) licencia

La prensa del MIT

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Sharing and Proportional Cues Chernyak, Trieu, Kushnir

helps children understand their own prosocial behavior, several lines of older work (Grusec,
Kuczynski, Rushton, & Simutis, 1978; McGrath & Fuerza, 1990) show that children are more
likely to continue being prosocial after an adult labels their prosocial action as being caused
by a self-oriented, internal attribution (p.ej., “you shared because you must like helping others”;
see also Bryan, Master, & Walton, 2014). The results of these studies suggest that experience
with prosocial action alone is insufﬁcient to cause future prosocial behavior. En cambio, children’s
interpretations and evaluations of their own actions increase the likelihood that children will
continue to act prosocially. Such evaluations can come from the way adults label and inter-
pret children’s actions (as in the latter example), but could also come from the child’s own
experience of social agency (por ejemplo, through making a costly choice, as in the former
ejemplo). Tomados juntos, this work suggests that children make important evaluations of their
own prosocial behavior, and are motivated to stay self-consistent with those evaluations (ver
also Tasimi & Joven, 2016).

How children come to form these evaluations of their own behavior, and the types of
cues that they use to form them is an important empirical question. En este trabajo, we investi-
gate whether children use proportional cues to make sense of their own prosocial behavior.
There are several lines of work suggesting that proportional cues serve as an important con-
textual cue.

Recent work has shown that proportional cues help children make social inferences.
Por ejemplo, when toddlers observe someone choosing a proportionally rare object (1 rojo
ball out of a box of mostly yellow), they infer that the action was the result of the agent’s
preference; when toddlers observe someone choosing a proportionally common object (1 rojo
ball out of a box of mostly red), they do not make any inference regarding preference (Kushnir,
Xu, & Wellman, 2010; see also Wellman, Kushnir, Xu, & Brink, 2016).

Within the prosocial behavior literature, proportional cues also allow children to make
third-party moral evaluations. As adults, we are capable of evaluating actions in terms of
absolute cost (Was it difﬁcult for me to help my friend?) but also relative degree of cost (Just
how difﬁcult was it?). McCrink, Bloom, and Santos (2010) found that children judged people
more positively when they gave away not only a larger number of their resources, but also a
larger proportion: 5-year-old-children and adults judged a recipient who gave 3 de 6 resources
away more positively than one who gave away 3 de 12 resources (see also Ng, Heyman, &
Barner, 2011). Similarmente, children are capable of using proportional cues to make resource
distribution decisions. By age 3, children give half of their resources to those who have done
half the work (Hamann, Warneken, Greenberg, & Tomasello, 2011) and distribute resources in
accordance with the proportion of work one has expended (Kanngiesser & Warneken, 2012).
Por lo tanto, children use proportional cues both within and outside the moral domain.

Motivated by this work, we asked whether preschool-aged children’s own experience
with proportional generosity might help them make inferences about their own actions and
thus motivate subsequent prosociality (p.ej., see Gneezy et al., 2012). We reasoned that chil-
dren who were the most proportionally generous would be able to make the strongest infer-
ences about their own actions, and would thus be the most motivated to stay self-consistent
with those inferences. Such a possibility would be consistent with recent work showing self-
consistency effects in young children’s prosocial behavior (Bryan et al., 2014; Chernyak &
Kushnir, 2013; Eisenberg, Cialdini, McCreath, & Shell, 1987; Tasimi & Joven, 2016). Alter-
natively, children who gave the most initially could also feel the most “licensed” to give the
fewest (see work on moral self-licensing; p.ej., Merritt, Effron, & Monin, 2010).

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Sharing and Proportional Cues Chernyak, Trieu, Kushnir

Across two studies, we gave preschool-aged children the opportunity to undertake a
prosocial action of giving 1 sticker to a puppet that was described as feeling sad. We varied the
proportional generosity of the action by varying the amount of stickers the child also had (either
0, 1, 2, o 3). De este modo, la misma acción (donación 1 sticker) ended up having a different proportional
cost to the child (it was either 1 de 1, 1 de 2, 1 de 3, o 1 de 4 of the child’s total resources). Nosotros
then examined children’s subsequent prosociality toward a new puppet. If proportional cues
serve as a mechanism that guides children’s action inferences, we reasoned that children who
were the most proportionally generous would be the most likely to be subsequently generous.

EXPERIMENT 1

In Experiment 1, children underwent an initial sharing phase in which they were introduced
to a puppet (“Doggie”) who was described as feeling sad. We then gave children between 0
y 3 stickers (randomly assigned) to keep for themselves. Además, we gave each child
1 more sticker and told them they could either keep that sticker or give it to Doggie. Después
the initial sharing phase, all children were introduced to a new puppet (“Ellie”) and a new
set of resources (three stickers) that they could either keep for themselves or share with the
new puppet.

Método

Fifty preschoolers (edad media = 3.94 años; range = 2.8–4.89 years; 28 femenino)
Participantes
participó. Children were recruited from a local school or children’s museum in a small
university town.

Materials Materials were two plush animals (“Doggie” and “Ellie”); three wooden boxes:
Doggie’s box, Ellie’s box (both of which had pictures on the tops and insides of Doggie and
Ellie, respectivamente), and the child’s box (no pictures); and a set of smiley face stickers of varying
colores. A schematic of materials and procedure is shown in Figure 1.

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Children were shown a plush animal named “Doggie” and told that Doggie was
Procedimiento
feeling “very sad today.” Doggie was then put away and a toy box was placed on the table and
introduced as “Doggie’s box.” The child was then randomly assigned to be shown either 4, 3,
2, o 1 stickers (referred to as the 1 de 4, 1 de 3, 1 de 2, o 1 de 1 condiciones, respectivamente). El
experimenter laid out the stickers in a linear array and counted them along with the child in
order to assure that they understood the proportion they were giving away.1 All children were
then given the opportunity to make a prosocial action: “You can either keep all of these/this
sticker for yourself, or you can give this sticker (pointed to last sticker) to Doggie so that he
feels better.” Almost all children (47 de 50; 94%; binomial p < .001) chose to give the sticker to Doggie regardless of condition, conﬁrming that children across conditions had the same f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 1 Three separate experimenters were trained to conduct both experiments. Upon review of the videotapes, we found that one experimenter failed to adhere to the experimental protocol: most critically, she (1) allowed the child to play with the stickers and take them out of the linear array prior to giving the full instructions, (2) did not consistently provide feedback after the child made a choice in the ﬁrst phase, and (3) did not consistently open and place Doggie’s box in front of the child. She was asked to cease data collection, and her data were replaced and not further analyzed. OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science 44 Sharing and Proportional Cues Chernyak, Trieu, Kushnir Figure 1. Representation of materials and procedure. initial experience of giving 1 sticker to a sad puppet.2 Once children made their choices, the box was put away, and the experimenter asked the child, “Do you remember when you gave the sticker to Doggie—did you choose to or have to do that?” (the order of “choose to” and “have to” was counterbalanced).3 Dependent Measure Our critical question was whether the proportion of stickers given then inﬂuenced children’s subsequent generosity toward a new individual in a new task. Because we wished to assess children’s behavior in a new situation and not children’s attempts to rectify the previous situation, we introduced children to a new individual and a new set of resources. All children were thus shown a new puppet (“Ellie”) and told that Ellie was also feeling sad today. Ellie was then put away and two boxes were placed in front of the child—Ellie’s box (which included pictures of Ellie on the top and inside) and the child’s own box (no pictures). The positioning of the two boxes was counterbalanced. The experimenter then stated that she had three more stickers and placed them between the two boxes, counted the stickers along with the child, and told the child she or he could either keep all of them for her- or himself or share some with Ellie. We chose the number three in order to force children to make either generous or selﬁsh splits. Reprompts were used if children left any stickers on the table (“and what do you want to do with these/that one?”), until a box was chosen for each sticker. All children were videotaped with the exception of one child whose parents did not Coding provide video consent, and whose answers were instead transcribed by a research assistant. Each video was coded by one of two research assistants. A coder blind to the condition the children were in then coded a subset (22–25%) of each research assistant’s videos for number of stickers given to Ellie. Interrater reliability was 100% for both coders. Nearly all children (46 of 50; 92%) chose to give at least one sticker and keep at least one for themselves, suggesting that children were both motivated to keep the resources and 2 We report the full data set, including the small subset of children who opted not to give the sticker to the puppet initially (3 in Experiment 1, 5 in Experiment 2). All reported results hold whether including or excluding this subset. 3 An analysis of this question showed that the overwhelming majority of children (73%) across both exper- iments simply responded with the last option given to them (i.e., “choose to” if the question was asked “Did you have to or choose to give that sticker?”). Recent research on this topic has shown that children of this age do not systematically understand or use the word “choose” until about 6 years of age (Kushnir, Gopnik, Chernyak, Seiver, & Wellman, 2015). We therefore do not further analyze this question. OPEN MIND: Discoveries in Cognitive Science 45 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u o p m i / l a r t i c e - p d f / / / / / 1 1 4 2 1 8 6 8 2 4 6 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 0 4 p d . i f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 Sharing and Proportional Cues Chernyak, Trieu, Kushnir also to share. The critical question was therefore whether children prioritized themselves or the puppet in the ﬁnal distributions. Distributions were coded as either generous sharing (giving the majority of stickers to Ellie) or selﬁsh sharing (keeping the majority of stickers for themselves). Results and Discussion Our critical question was whether initial proportional generosity guided children’s subsequent sharing (toward Ellie). We predicted a linear relationship between initial degree of costliness and likelihood of generous sharing. To investigate this prediction, we ran a binary regression using percentage of stickers given in the ﬁrst phase (i.e., condition type: 1 of 4 [25%], 1 of 3 [33%], 1 of 2 [50%], or 1 of 1 [100%]), age, and gender as the predictors and whether children displayed generous sharing (yes/no) in the second phase as the response (see Figure 2). We report details on ﬁnal models used in our Supplemental Materials (Chernyak, Trieu, & Kushnir, 2016). There was a signiﬁcant effect of condition (initial proportion given) on the likelihood of subsequent generous sharing, B = 2.87, SE(B) = 1.14, Wald(1) = 6.39, p = .01, and no other signiﬁcant effects (all ps > .15).

In spite of performing the exact same prosocial action initially (giving one sticker), el
proportional costliness to the child predicted the likelihood of subsequent generosity. Nuestro
results are thus consistent with the idea that proportional cues serve as a mechanism to help
children make sense of and infer their own prosocial intentions and abilities. Notablemente, en esto
experimento, children could only give generously or selﬁshly—because they had three stickers,
children were forced to distribute stickers either in favor of themselves or the puppet. We know,
sin embargo, that young children have a strong tendency to distribute resources equally (Olson &
Spelke, 2008; Shaw & Olson, 2012, 2013) and expect others to do the same (Schmidt &
Sommerville, 2011; sloan, Baillargeon, & Premack, 2012). A more stringent test, por lo tanto,
of the idea that children rationally infer their own prosocial preferences from proportional
señales, is one that also includes the option of equal sharing.

In Experiment 2, we thus pitted a known cognitive bias (equal sharing) against the
effect we found in Experiment 1. We repeated our experiment, but made one small

Cifra 2. Proportion of sharing types across conditions in Experiment 1.

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Sharing and Proportional Cues Chernyak, Trieu, Kushnir

modiﬁcation: During the dependent measure phase, we presented children with four stick-
ers, thus allowing them the option of equal sharing. Our modiﬁed design allowed us to test
an additional research question: In Experiment 1, children who chose not to give generously
could only give selﬁshly: We thus do not know whether proportional generosity increases gen-
erous sharing, o, alternatively, decreases selﬁsh sharing (o ambos). The design of Experiment 2
thus allowed us to distinguish these possibilities: children who chose not to give generously
could give either equally or selﬁshly. Similarmente, children who chose not to give selﬁshly could
give either equally or generously.

EXPERIMENT 2

The design of Experiment 2 followed exactly that of Experiment 1, except that children were
given four stickers during the dependent measure phase.

Método

Participantes
23 femenino) participó. Children were recruited from a local school or children’s museum.

Forty-nine preschoolers (edad media = 3.92 años; range = 2.88–4.91 years;

Materials and Procedure Materials and procedure followed that of Experiment 1, con el
critical modiﬁcation that four stickers were presented during the dependent measure phase
(ver figura 1). As in Experiment 1, almost all children (44/49; 90%; binomial p < .001) chose to give the sticker to Doggie (undertake in the initial prosocial action). l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / d i r e c t . m i t . / e d u o p m i / l a r t i c e - p d f / / / / / 1 1 4 2 1 8 6 8 2 4 6 o p m _ a _ 0 0 0 0 4 p d . i f b y g u e s t t o n 0 7 S e p e m b e r 2 0 2 3 All children were videotaped with the exception of three children whose parents Coding did not provide video consent, and whose answers were instead transcribed by a research assistant. Each video was coded by one of two research assistants. A condition-blind coder then coded a subset (22–25%) of each researcher’s videos for number of stickers given to Ellie. Interrater reliability was 100% for both coders. Distributions were coded as generous sharing (giving the majority of stickers to Ellie), fair sharing (giving 2 of 4 stickers to Ellie), or selﬁsh sharing (keeping the majority of stickers). Results and Discussion Our critical question was whether initial proportional generosity guided children’s subsequent sharing (toward Ellie). We ran an ordinal regression using percentage of stickers given in the ﬁrst phase (i.e., condition type: 1 of 4 [25%], 1 of 3 [33%], 1 of 2 [50%], or 1 of 1 [100%]), age, and gender as the predictors and sharing type in the second phase (selﬁsh, fair, generous) as the response (see Figure 3). Once again, the results revealed that initial proportion given signiﬁcantly predicted sharing type, B = 2.61, SE(B) = 1.11, Wald(1) = 5.55, p = .02; no other effects reached signiﬁcance (all ps > .25).

Our next question was whether children would default to fair sharing when given the
chance. As seen in Figure 3, children displayed high rates of fair sharing: If we consider that
each child would divide each sticker up randomly (either place it into Ellie’s box or his/her own
box), the likelihood of sharing fairly by chance would be 37.5%. Twenty-nine (de 49; 60%)
children chose to share fairly, which was signiﬁcantly above chance levels, binomial p < .01. A binomial regression using condition type, age, and gender as the predictors and fair sharing as the response showed that there were no differences in fair sharing across conditions, B = 1.88, SE(B) = 1.13, Wald(1) = 2.78, p = .10, age, or gender (all ps > .25). Por lo tanto, when fairness

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Sharing and Proportional Cues Chernyak, Trieu, Kushnir

Cifra 3. Proportion of sharing types across conditions in Experiment 2.

was possible, most children shared fairly in the second phase regardless of prior experience
with proportional generosity in the ﬁrst phase.

As a consequence of this, the rates of generous sharing were relatively low—only 5 de
49 niños (10%) chose to share generously. This result stands in contrast to the rates of
generous sharing found in Experiment 1 (when fair sharing was impossible), en el cual 17
de 50 (34%) children chose to share generously. The difference between the two experiments
was signiﬁcant, Fisher’s exact test p = .007. A binomial regression using condition type, edad,
and gender as the predictors and generous sharing as the response showed no difference in
generous sharing across conditions or across ages, all ps > .10.

The rates of selﬁsh sharing were also relatively low: 15 de 49 niños (31%) chose to
share selﬁshly in Experiment 2, in contrast with Experiment 1 en el cual 33 de 50 (66%) of chil-
dren shared selﬁshly, Fisher’s exact p < .001. A binomial regression using condition type, age, and gender as the predictors and selﬁsh sharing as the response showed that initial proportion shared in the ﬁrst negatively predicted the likelihood of selﬁsh sharing in the second phase, B = -3.58, SE(B) = 1.62, Wald(1) = 4.90, p = .03, and no other signiﬁcant effects, ps > .25.
Por lo tanto, selﬁsh sharing was reduced by initial experience with proportional generosity. Este
more stringent test (with the availability of a fair option) suggests that initial experience with
proportional generosity decreased selﬁsh behavior.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Across two experiments we found that proportional generosity in the ﬁrst phase reduced chil-
dren’s selﬁsh sharing in the second phase. En tono rimbombante, although all children gave the exact
same surface action of giving one sticker to the puppet, the proportional cues guided children’s
subsequent sharing decisions. This result is in line with the hypothesis that proportional cues
help children construct their own prosocial intentions, as well as work that ﬁnds that children
make moral evaluations of others based on proportional sharing (McCrink et al., 2010). Nosotros
show that even when the initial experience of giving is exactly the same (each child gave one

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Sharing and Proportional Cues Chernyak, Trieu, Kushnir

sticker, made the same choice of giving or keeping the sticker, and was never rewarded for it),
the proportional generosity of the act guides children’s subsequent behavior.

Paradójicamente, the more stickers children received, the fewer they gave. Similarmente, el
fewer stickers the children received, the more they gave. The pattern of results speaks to the
strength of self-consistency effects in young children. Giving away one’s only resource or even
half of one’s resources could have caused moral self-licensing (es decir., a “license” to be selﬁsh
once already having proven oneself to be prosocial; see Merritt et al., 2010). Children who
gave away their only sticker could have felt a particular desire to “even out” the scoreboard
by later taking more stickers for themselves. Encontramos, sin embargo, that this was not the case:
children who were the most generous at ﬁrst were also the most likely to be generous subse-
frecuentemente. We note that while moral self-licensing effects have been well-documented in adults,
a nuestro conocimiento, there is no present evidence of moral self-licensing effects in young chil-
niños. One possibility for why we may not see licensing effects may be that young children do
not yet have a coherent sense of prosocial identity to feel “licensed” about (see Hardy & carlo,
2011), nor do they have a sophisticated view of “moral credit” (es decir., a concept of how actions
do and don’t contribute to their moral self-identity). Another possibility is that costly sharing
of the kind we induced is more likely to cause self-consistency effects even in adults (Gneezy
et al., 2012; see also Mullen & Monin, 2016, for a fuller treatment of these issues). Given
these possibilities, we believe it may be fruitful for future work to investigate the developmental
onset of self-licensing effects.

We note that it is an interesting question whether (a) the “selﬁsh” conditions (1 de 4
y 1 de 3 condiciones) increased selﬁsh sharing, or whether (b) the “nonselﬁsh” (1 de 2 y 1
de 1) conditions reduced selﬁsh sharing relative to children’s baseline sharing. Prior research
has looked at the effect of conditions in which children are able to engage in either costless
sharing, or in no sharing at all (Chernyak & Kushnir, 2013) on children’s subsequent generosity,
and found that in these conditions, approximately 26–33% of children engaged in subsequent
generous sharing. If these rates reﬂect baseline sharing, the present study suggests that both (a)
y (b) are true: el 1 de 4 y 1 de 3 conditions may have increased selﬁsh sharing relative
to this baseline, mientras que el 1 de 2 y 1 de 1 conditions decreased selﬁsh sharing. Taken
together, our results suggest that costliness did not inﬂuence children in a binary manner (p.ej.,
“Was the action costly or noncostly?"), but rather, in a graded and proportional manner. Bastante
than distinguishing only between actions that follow social norms (donación 1 de 2; half) versus
those that do not or actions that are selﬁsh (keeping more than half) versus those that are not,
children are inﬂuenced by the graded, proportional cost of each condition.

In our work, we deﬁne cost in purely economic terms—the reason why the 1 de 1 condi-
tion is more costly than the 1 de 4 condition is because children give away a larger proportion
of resources. It is an open question whether such economic cost also translates to perceived
psychological cost. Por ejemplo, given work suggesting that children are actually happier
when giving in a costly manner (Aknin, Hamlin, & Dunn, 2012; Dunn, Aknin, & norton,
2008; Dunn & norton, 2013), children may have paradoxically perceived less psychological
cost while experiencing greater economical cost. The relationship between economic and
psychological costliness deserves further investigation.

When given the choice to share equally, children did so at remarkably high rates, mim-
icking prior work ﬁnding that young children have a strong prior tendency to share resources
equally with others (Shaw & Olson, 2012, 2013). Sin embargo, the children surveyed in our sam-
ple were younger than ages previously found to be capable of engaging in equal sharing (ver
Smith et al., 2013). We believe that the context in which children were presented with the

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Sharing and Proportional Cues Chernyak, Trieu, Kushnir

sharing scenario may have played a role: Even 3-year-olds are capable of sharing equally
when sharing occurs in a collaborative context (Hamann et al., 2011). Similarmente, our con-
text of a sympathetic puppet that was in need of comfort may have inspired equal sharing in
young children.

A growing body of work is ﬁnding that preschool children’s prosocial behavior is con-
textually sensitive (Barragan & Dweck, 2014; Bryan et al., 2014; Chernyak & Kushnir, 2013;
Warneken & Tomasello, 2008). Together with our work, such studies provide evidence that
reciprocal interactions with adults, trait labels, social praise, free choice, and proportional
cues all appear to affect how children behave toward others. We want to note that further
work is needed to understand the exact inference that children are making while engaging in
prosocial actions. Our results speak to the possibility that children may be constructing their
identities through making inferences about themselves with respect to the types of actions they
undertake (how generous those actions are). Además, children may be making stronger infer-
ences about their own prosocial motives after engaging in proportional generosity. Alternative
possibilities include the fact that children may have attempted to maintain a self-consistent
reputation in front of the experimenter (Shaw et al., 2014), or that children who were given
initially larger endowments felt more entitled to keep subsequent endowments. De este modo, propor-
tional cues may be helping children construct an understanding of their prosocial identities,
their prosocial reputations, or the proportion of resources to which they are entitled. Future
research is needed to disambiguate these possibilities.

There are many features that may have scaffolded the children’s abilities to learn from
their own proportional generosity. Primero, the experimenter clearly labeled the number of stickers
available to the child (“Here are [four] stickers just for you”) as well as the number that the child
gave away. Giving such numerical cues may have helped the children understand their relative
generosity (or lack thereof) by comparing the numbers that were cited by the experimenter. On
the other hand, number concept might not be critical for understanding this task, and instead,
children may simply experience greater physiological arousal when giving away their only
sticker than when giving away one of four stickers that they had.

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These studies suggest that experiences with generous giving help inspire future generosity
and decrease future selﬁshness. Our results suggest an important role of providing children
with experience exercising their own generosity, but also stress the role of providing the proper
types of generous experiences: providing children with easy experiences may not be sufﬁcient
In studying which actions do and don’t motivate generous
in scaffolding future generosity.
comportamiento, we may be able to further understand which early experiences inspire generosity in
young children.

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EXPRESIONES DE GRATITUD

We would like to thank Anne Park, Nancy Ha, and Rachel Minton for assistance with data col-
lection and coding and the Ithaca Sciencenter and participating preschools for use of space;
special thanks to David Sobel and Meredith Rowe for lending resources. This work was
supported by a Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship from the National Academy for
Education to NC, a Student and Early Career Dissertation Funding Award from the Society
for Research in Child Development to NC, and a Cornell Institute for the Social Sciences
grant to TK.

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Sharing and Proportional Cues Chernyak, Trieu, Kushnir

CONTRIBUCIONES DE AUTOR

CAROLINA DEL NORTE, BYT, and TK designed the studies; BYT collected and coded data with help from research
assistants; NC analyzed the data and drafted the manuscript with input from BYT and TK; TK
and BYT provided revisions.

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