No abstract

Forests are essential common‐pool resources. Understanding children's and adolescents’ motivations for conservation is critical to improving conservation education. In 2 experiments, we investigated 1086 school‐aged children and adolescents (6–16 years old) from the United States, China, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Testing participants in groups, we assessed their motivation for conservation based on collective‐risk common‐pool goods games in which they were threatened with losing their endowment unless the group donation exceeded a threshold needed to maintain the forest. Extrinsic motivations, rather than intrinsic, tended to lead to successful cooperation to maintain a forest. Certainty of losing individual payoffs significantly boosted successful cooperative conservation efforts across cultures (success rates were 90.63% and 74.19% in the 2 risk‐extrinsic conditions, and 43.75% in the control condition). In U.S. participants, 2 extrinsic incentives, priming discussions of the value of forests and delay of payoffs as punishment, also increased success of cooperative conservation (success rates were 97.22% and 76.92% in the 2 extrinsic‐incentive conditions, and 29.19% and 30.77% in the 2 control conditions). Conservation simulations, like those we used, may allow educators to encourage forest protection by leading groups to experience successful cooperation and the extrinsic incentives needed to motivate forest conservation.

Dehumanization is observed in adults across cultures and is thought to motivate the worst forms of human violence. The age of first expression and the degree of socialization required to foster dehumanization remains largely untested. Here we show that several different representations of humanness, including a novel one, readily elicit blatant dehumanization in adults and children (5-12 years of age). We also find that dehumanizing responses in both age groups are associated with stronger perception of outgroup inferiority and a willingness to punish outgroup transgressions. Results rule out the need for exposure to cultural norms throughout adolescents and adulthood before observing significant outgroup dehumanization. We argue these findings provide support for the hypothesis that dehumanization emerges with theory of mind abilities in early childhood rather than resulting from a more general-purpose mechanism that is a by-product of adult abilities for metaphorical reasoning and social learning.

Forests are essential common-pool resources. Understanding school-aged children and adolescents’ motivations to conserve forests is critical for improving conservation education. In two experiments with school age children and adolescents (age range: 6-16; N=1088), we demonstrate that extrinsic, rather than intrinsic motivations lead to successful cooperation in common-pool goods games to maintain a forest. We investigate participants from three nationalities (China, D. R. Congo and U.S.) and find certainty of losing individual payoffs significantly boosts successful cooperative conservation efforts across cultures. Within the U.S. sample, we find two other types of extrinsic incentive, priming discussions of the value of forests and delay of payoffs as punishment also encourage the success of cooperative conservation. Conservation simulations, like those used here, may allow educators to encourage forest protection by allowing groups to experience successful cooperation and the extrinsic incentives needed to motivate forest conservation. Future research will be needed to test if these types of simulations have long term positive impact on participant’s attitudes and behavior toward forest conservation.One Sentence SummaryExtrinsic motivation increases donations for forests among children and adolescents in the United States, China, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.