Children Delay Gratification for Cooperative Ends

Abstract

To cooperate effectively, both in small-scale interactions and large-scale collective-action problems, people frequently have to delay gratification (i.e., resist short-term temptations in favor of joint long-term goals). Although delay-of-gratification skills are commonly considered critical in children’s social-cognitive development, they have rarely been studied in the context of cooperative decision-making. In the current study, we therefore presented pairs of children ( N = 207 individuals) with a modified version of the famous marshmallow test, in which children’s outcomes were interdependently linked such that the children were rewarded only if both members of the pair delayed gratification. Children from two highly diverse cultures (Germany and Kenya) performed substantially better than they did on a standard version of the test, suggesting that children are more willing to delay gratification for cooperative than for individual goals. The results indicate that from early in life, human children are psychologically equipped to respond to social interdependencies in ways that facilitate cooperative success.

The psychological foundations of reputation-based cooperation

“…Similar patterns have been observed in adults (Curry et al, 2008;Harris & Madden, 2002; though see Barclay & Barker, 2020;Wu et al, 2017), as well as in blue jays who are prevented from consuming rewards immediately (Stephens et al, 2002). Children are also better at delaying gratification in cooperative tasks than solo tasks (Koomen et al, 2020). A direct link between delay of gratification and reputational management has been suggested in 3-and 4-year-old children (Ma et al, 2020), although other work has shown that people are unable to anticipate the delayed indirect benefits from their own cooperative investments (Wu et al, 2016).…”

Patient children are less likely to share with unknown children

“…Only a limited number of studies looked at how delay of grati cation is related to children's prosocial sharing. A positive relationship between delay of grati cation and reciprocal sharing was reported by Moore & Macgillivray (24) and Koomen et al (25) in a modi ed delay of grati cation task in which children could wait to provide bene ts to a familiar third party and by Sebastián-Enesco & Warneken (26) where resources obtained in a delay of grati cation task could be shared with a puppet. To our knowledge, no study has yet measured delay of grati cation and prosocial sharing using two independent tasks where decisions regarding delay are independent from sharing decisions, and involving "real" same-age children as partners testing in a realistic environment (i.e.…”

Social Well-Being at School: Development and Validation of a Scale for Primary Education Students

“…Students help each other to learn, share ideas and resources. Thus, the best way to educate in solidarity is practising it through cooperation (Koomen et al, 2020). The same holds true with the factors of solidarity and coexistence, with the research by authors such as Markham (2019) and Valero et al (2018) showing a strong interaction between the two.…”