Developmental Psychology, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Munich, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2014 Jun 10;5:344. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00344. eCollection 2014.
Recent studies have provided evidence that young children already engage in sharing behavior. The underlying social-cognitive mechanisms, however, are still under debate. In particular, it is unclear whether or not young children's sharing is motivated by an appreciation of others' wealth. Manipulating the material needs of recipients in a sharing task (Experiment 1) and a resource allocation task (Experiment 2), we show that 5- but not 3-year-old children share more with poor than wealthy individuals. The 3-year-old children even showed a tendency to behave less selfishly towards the rich, yet not the poor recipient. This suggests that very early instances of sharing behavior are not motivated by a consideration of others' material needs. Moreover, the results show that 5-year-old children were rather inclined to give more to the poor individual than distributing the resources equally, demonstrating that their wish to support the poor overruled the otherwise very prominent inclination to share resources equally. This indicates that charity has strong developmental roots in preschool children.
最近的研究提供了证据，表明幼儿已经开始表现出分享行为。然而，潜在的社会认知机制仍存在争议。特别是，目前还不清楚幼儿的分享行为是否是出于对他人财富的欣赏。在分享任务（实验 1）和资源分配任务（实验 2）中操纵接受者的物质需求，我们发现，只有 5 岁而不是 3 岁的儿童会与贫困者而不是富有的人分享更多。3 岁的儿童甚至对富有的接受者表现出不太自私的行为，但对贫困的接受者却没有。这表明，非常早期的分享行为并不是由对他人物质需求的考虑所驱动的。此外，研究结果表明，5 岁的儿童更倾向于给贫困者更多的资源，而不是平均分配资源，这表明他们希望支持贫困者的愿望超过了他们原本非常强烈的平均分配资源的倾向。这表明，慈善事业在学龄前儿童中有着深厚的发展根基。
