Preschool Children’s Behavioral Tendency toward Social Indirect Reciprocity

Abstract

Social indirect reciprocity seems to be crucial in enabling large-scale cooperative networks among genetically unrelated individuals in humans. However, there are relatively few studies on social indirect reciprocity in children compared to adults. Investigating whether young children have a behavioral tendency toward social indirect reciprocity will help us understand how and when the fundamental ability to form cooperative relationships among adults is acquired. Using naturalistic observation at a nursery school, this study examined whether 5- to 6-year-olds show a behavioral tendency to engage in social indirect reciprocity in response to their peers’ prosocial behavior toward a third party. The results revealed that bystander children tended to display prosocial behavior toward their peers more frequently after observing these peers’ prosocial behavior toward third-party peers, compared with control situations; this suggests that 5- to 6-year-olds may have an essential behavioral tendency to establish social indirect reciprocity when interacting with peers in their daily lives. In addition, bystanders tended to display affiliative behavior after observing focal children’s prosocial behavior. In other words, observing peers’ prosocial behavior toward third-party peers evoked bystanders’ positive emotions toward the helpers. Considering both the present results and previous findings, we speculate that in preschoolers, such positive emotions might mediate the increase in the bystander’s prosocial behavior toward the helper. In addition, an intuitional emotional process plays an important role in the preschooler’s behavioral tendency toward social indirect reciprocity in natural interactions with peers.

‘I see you sharing, thus I share with you’: indirect reciprocity in toddlers but not infants

“…Studies have also revealed that it is not before 5-6 years of age that children spontaneously reciprocate recipients who have previously shown prosocial behaviour toward a third party (Kato-Shimizu et al, 2013), thus supporting the possibility that indirect reciprocity may be a late developing aspect of prosocial behaviour. Interestingly, the concept of reputation, which is strongly linked to indirect reciprocity, seems to emerge around 5-6 years of age too.…”

The development of the effect of peer monitoring on generosity differs among elementary school-age boys and girls

“…According to the perspective of indirect reciprocity, people are thought to have a strong motivation to build a good reputation in social exchange domains in order to elicit favors from third parties, thus people become sensitive to monitoring by others. Consistent with this notion, studies have shown that people tend to base their behaviors on how others have behaved in the past ( Wedekind and Milinski, 2000 ) and that generous people receive more assistance from third-parties ( Kato-Shimizu et al, 2013 ). Signaling theory proposes that people can use costly signals, such as by giving generous allocations to others, to honestly signal their cooperative nature.…”

The evolution and development of human cooperation

“…Call, 2009;Carpenter, 2009), and are especially attracted to social stimuli (e.g. Cohen & Cashon, 2006;Keen, 2003). Like other social species, humans are motivated to be with their conspecifics and likely evolved the cognitive skills to relate to others both in positive ways (e.g.…”