ABSTRACT

Engaging in prosocial behavior is costly. By selectively directing prosocial behavior toward individuals with a high probability of reciprocating, we are able to offset these potential costs and maintain a sustainable prosocial system. Often, we determine whether an individual will make a good prosocial partner through the observation of their social behaviors. In the absence of such behavioral information, however, group membership can be an effective heuristic for guiding selectivity. Older children and adults show ingroup bias when engaging in selective social behavior, but studies with samples of children under the age of 4 years have been inconclusive. In part, this may be because studies have often relied on measures of prosocial behavior such as sharing or subjective liking, which are reliant on additional cognitive processes apart from selectivity considerations and which may still be undergoing development early in childhood. These tasks may mask younger children’s capacity for selectivity in the ingroup context. The present study recruited 65 2-year-old children with the aim to test the capacity for toddlers to demonstrate group-based selective behavior in a minimal group task. Results suggest that children of this age preference both minimal group members and unlabeled similar others over dissimilar individuals when directing their selective helping, but not sharing, behavior. In sum, the findings suggest that even toddlers have a developing sense of ingroup bias in selective prosocial behavior, and that helping, as opposed to sharing, may be a more sensitive measure of children’s group-oriented selective behavior at this age.

摘要

从事亲社会行为的成本很高。通过有选择地将亲社会行为指向具有高回报可能性的个人，我们能够抵消这些潜在成本并维持可持续的亲社会系统。通常，我们通过观察他们的社会行为来确定一个人是否会成为一个良好的亲社会伴侣。但是，在没有此类行为信息的情况下，组成员身份可能是指导选择性的有效试探法。年龄较大的儿童和成年人在进行选择性的社会行为时表现出群体偏见，但是对4岁以下儿童的样本进行的研究尚无定论。在某种程度上，这可能是因为研究经常依赖亲社会行为的度量，例如分享或主观喜好，除了选择性考虑之外，这些依赖于其他认知过程，并且在儿童早期可能仍在发展。这些任务可能掩盖了幼儿在小组环境中的选择性能力。本研究招募了65名2岁的儿童，旨在测试幼儿在最小的小组任务中表现出基于小组的选择性行为的能力。结果表明，这个年龄段的孩子在指导他们的选择性帮助而不是分享行为时，既偏爱最小的组成员，也偏爱未标记的相似的其他人，而不是不相似的个体。总而言之，研究结果表明，即使是幼儿，在选择性亲社会行为中也有逐渐形成的群体偏见，并且与分享相比，帮助，