Levy-Friedman Bar, Kogut Tehila
Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Child Dev. 2025 Jan-Feb;96(1):441-450. doi: 10.1111/cdev.14171. Epub 2024 Sep 20.
This study examined children's self-assessment of their prosociality, relative to average peers, in situations where the recipient is described as "needy" versus "not needy" (at a school of average socioeconomic level in south Israel; N = 158; aged 6-12 years; 51% males, December-May 2021). The results show that older children exhibited the better-than-average (BTA) effect by seeing themselves as more generous than peers. In contrast, younger children displayed the worse-than-average effect by expecting peers to be more generous than themselves. However, both effects were attenuated ( = .16) when the recipient was described as "needy," leading to higher expectations of sharing from oneself and others. This implies that besides children's motivational tendency to self-evaluate as BTA, they also base their evaluations on actual environmental cues.
本研究调查了在以色列南部一所社会经济水平中等的学校中（N = 158；年龄在6至12岁之间；51%为男性；2021年12月至5月），儿童在接受者被描述为“有需要”与“无需要”的情况下，相对于同龄平均水平对自身亲社会行为的自我评估。结果显示，年龄较大的儿童通过认为自己比同龄人更慷慨而表现出优于平均水平（BTA）的效应。相比之下，年龄较小的儿童则表现出低于平均水平的效应，因为他们期望同龄人比自己更慷慨。然而，当接受者被描述为“有需要”时，这两种效应都有所减弱（= 0.16），从而导致对自己和他人分享的期望更高。这意味着，除了儿童将自己评估为优于平均水平的动机倾向外，他们的评估还基于实际的环境线索。
