Past research suggests that children favour their in-group members over out-group members as indicated by selective prosociality such as sharing or social inclusion. This preregistered study examined how playing a cooperative, competitive or solitary game influences German 4- to 6-year-olds’ in-group bias and their general willingness to act prosocially, independent of the recipient's group membership (N = 144). After playing the game, experimenters introduced minimal groups and assessed children's sharing with an in-group and an out-group member as well as their social inclusion of an out-group member into an in-group interaction. Furthermore, we assessed children's physical engagement and parents' social dominance orientation (SDO)—a scale indicating the preference for inequality among social groups—to learn more about inter-individual differences in children's prosocial behaviours. Results suggest that children showed a stronger physical engagement while playing competitively as compared with cooperatively or alone. The different gaming contexts did not impact children's subsequent in-group bias or general willingness to act prosocially. Parental SDO was not linked to children's prosocial behaviours. These results indicate that competition can immediately affect children's behaviour while playing but raise doubt on the importance of cooperative and competitive play for children's subsequent intergroup and prosocial behaviour.

过去的研究表明，选择性共享性（例如共享或社会包容）表明，儿童更喜欢组内成员而不是组外成员。这项预先注册的研究调查了玩合作，竞争或孤独的游戏如何影响德国4至6岁儿童的组内偏见以及他们独立于接受者的组员身份而采取公益性行动的总体意愿（N= 144）。在玩完游戏后，实验者介绍了最少的小组，并评估了儿童与小组内和小组外成员的共享情况，以及他们对小组外成员在小组内互动中的社会包容性。此外，我们评估了孩子的身体参与程度和父母的社会主导地位（SDO）（一种表明社会群体之间不平等偏好的量表），以更多地了解孩子在亲社会行为上的个体差异。结果表明，与合作或单独玩耍的孩子相比，他们在玩比赛时表现出更强的身体投入。不同的游戏环境并没有影响儿童随后的组内偏见或采取社交行为的总体意愿。父母的SDO与孩子的亲社会行为无关。