Minerva Research Group of Origin of Human Self-Regulation, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA; Department of Developmental Psychology, Georg-Elias Müller Institute of Psychology, University of Göttingen, 37073 Göttingen, Germany.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2019 Mar;179:176-189. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2018.11.008. Epub 2018 Dec 8.
Humans cultivate their reputations as good cooperators, sometimes even competing with group mates, to appear most cooperative to individuals during the process of selecting partners. To investigate the ontogenetic origins of such "competitive altruism," we presented 5- and 8-year-old children with a dyadic sharing game in which both children simultaneously decided how many rewards to share with each other. The children were either observed by a third-person peer or not. In addition, the children either knew that one of them would be picked for a subsequent collaborative game or had no such knowledge. We found that by 8 years of age, children were more generous in the sharing game not only when their behavior was observed by a third party but also when it could affect their chances of being chosen for a subsequent game. This is the first demonstration of competitive altruism in young children, and as such it underscores the important role of partner choice (and individual awareness of the process) in encouraging human cooperation from an early age.
人类培养自己善于合作的声誉，有时甚至与团队成员竞争，以在选择合作伙伴的过程中让个人看起来最具合作性。为了探究这种“竞争利他主义”的个体发生起源，我们向 5 岁和 8 岁的儿童呈现了一个二元共享游戏，在这个游戏中，两个孩子同时决定彼此之间分享多少奖励。儿童要么被一个第三人同伴观察，要么不被观察。此外，孩子们要么知道他们中的一个将被选中参加随后的合作游戏，要么不知道。我们发现，到 8 岁时，孩子们在分享游戏中更加慷慨大方，不仅当他们的行为被第三方观察到时，而且当他们的行为可以影响他们被选中参加随后游戏的机会时。这是在幼儿中首次证明竞争利他主义，因此它强调了伙伴选择（以及个人对这一过程的意识）在鼓励人类从小就进行合作方面的重要作用。
