Beware Of Popular Kids Bearing Gifts: A Framed Field Experiment - Jignan Chen, Daniel Houser, Natalia Montinari, And Marco Piovesan (Interdisciplinary Center For Economic Science, George Mason University) Page 8
ADVERTISEMENT
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34H2: Older children in public environments display greater generosity than older
children in private environments, or younger children in either public or private
environments (Main Age Effect).
People develop social preferences: they prefer sharing and fairness to selfish
7
alternatives
. As children grow older, they develop an innate sense of caring about others
and egalitarian preferences (Fehr et al., 2008). Older children also have a better
understanding and ability to use theory-of-mind reasoning, and are more likely to believe
that their peers will perceive them negatively if they are shown to be selfish. This
anticipated disapproval from peers further prevents them from behaving in a selfish
manner (Houser et al. 2012). Therefore, we hypothesize that older children will behave
more prosocially then younger children, regardless of social context.
H3: In public environments, older and more popular children display greater
generosity than: (i) less popular older children; and (ii) younger children regardless
of popularity; in private environments there is no effect of popularity on generosity
among children of any age (Age & Popularity Interaction Effect)
Older children with more developed theory-of-mind reasoning are more likely to pay
greater attention to others’ perception about them; therefore, those children may have
added incentives to acquire or maintain popularity (Aloise-Young, 1993; Banerjee, 2002;
Bennett & Yeeles, 1990). Since popularity is a public phenomenon, older children will
behave more generously only in public, as opposed to private, settings. On the other
hand, younger children with less developed theory-of-mind reasoning are less likely to
pay special attention to social image, and therefore have less incentives to be more
generous in public than private situations. For example, Shaw et al. (2013) suggest that as
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
7
16- to 19-month-old infants gaze longer when resources are distributed unequally between two recipients,
and prefer fair over unfair people (Geraci & Surian, 2011; Schmidt & Sommerville, 2011; Sloane et al.,
2012). In the preschool years, children allocate resources equally between recipients when possible
(Damon, 1977; Hook & Cook, 1979; Olson & Spelke, 2008; Sigelman & Waitzman, 1991). Between the
ages of 6 and 8, children will sacrifice their own resources in an attempt to be fair (Blake & McAuliffe,
2011; Shaw & Olson, 2012).
!
6!
ADVERTISEMENT
0 votes
Related Articles
Related forms
Related Categories
Parent category: Business