Department of Human Development, Cornell University.
Psychol Sci. 2013 Oct;24(10):1971-9. doi: 10.1177/0956797613482335. Epub 2013 Aug 16.
Young children are remarkably prosocial, but the mechanisms driving their prosociality are not well understood. Here, we propose that the experience of choice is critically tied to the expression of young children's altruistic behavior. Three- and 4-year-olds were asked to allocate resources to an individual in need by making a costly choice (allocating a resource they could have kept for themselves), a noncostly choice (allocating a resource that would otherwise be thrown away), or no choice (following instructions to allocate the resource). We measured subsequent prosociality by allowing children to then allocate new resources to a new individual. Although the majority of children shared with the first individual, children who were given costly alternatives shared more with the new individual. Results are discussed in terms of a prosocial-construal hypothesis, which suggests that children rationally infer their prosociality through the process of making difficult, autonomous choices.
幼儿非常有亲社会倾向，但驱动他们亲社会行为的机制还不是很清楚。在这里，我们提出，选择的体验与幼儿利他行为的表达密切相关。我们让 3 到 4 岁的儿童通过做出代价高昂的选择（分配他们本可以保留给自己的资源）、非代价选择（分配本会被扔掉的资源）或不做选择（按照指令分配资源）来为有需要的人分配资源。我们通过让儿童随后为新的个体分配新的资源来衡量他们后续的亲社会行为。尽管大多数儿童会与第一个个体分享，但如果给他们提供代价更高的选择，他们会与新个体分享更多。研究结果从亲社会构建假说的角度进行了讨论，该假说表明，儿童通过做出困难、自主的选择这一过程，理性地推断出自己的亲社会倾向。
