Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2021 Jan;201:104996. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104996. Epub 2020 Oct 1.
We examined the development of children's self-evaluation of their prosociality in normative social comparisons (with an average peer). Results suggest that when comparing themselves with an average other in the abstract (i.e., without reference to actual behavior), elementary school children (aged 6-12 years) demonstrated the better than average (BTA) effect of perceiving themselves as more prosocial than their average peer (Study 1). However, when they evaluated other children's prosociality (sharing), after experiencing an actual opportunity to share their endowment with others (Studies 2 and 3), the younger children (at first-grade level) exhibited the worse than average (WTA) effect in that they assumed that their peers would act more generously than themselves. Task difficulty predicted relative self-evaluations across all examined ages, such that greater difficulty was related to a lower BTA effect (or a greater WTA effect). However, whereas the older children used abstract difficulty perceptions to evaluate themselves relative to others, the younger children's evaluations were affected only by the difficulty that they themselves experienced. In all age groups, the BTA effect was driven mostly by participants who were above the mean in the extent of their sharing, whereas the WTA effect was driven by those who shared below the mean of their age group.
我们考察了儿童在规范性社会比较（与平均同伴比较）中自我评价亲社会行为的发展。结果表明，当儿童在抽象层面（即，不参考实际行为）将自己与平均他人进行比较时，小学生（6-12 岁）表现出了优于平均的（BTA）效应，即他们认为自己比平均同伴更具有亲社会倾向（研究 1）。然而，当他们评价其他儿童的亲社会行为（分享）时，在经历了实际的分享机会后（研究 2 和 3），年龄较小的儿童（一年级水平）表现出了差于平均的（WTA）效应，即他们认为自己的同伴会比自己更慷慨。任务难度预测了所有被试年龄的相对自我评价，即难度越大，BTA 效应越低（或 WTA 效应越高）。然而，尽管年龄较大的儿童使用抽象的难度感知来评估自己与他人的关系，但年龄较小的儿童的评估仅受到他们自己所经历的难度的影响。在所有年龄组中，BTA 效应主要由那些在分享程度上高于平均水平的参与者驱动，而 WTA 效应则由那些低于他们所在年龄组平均水平的参与者驱动。
