Prosocial risk taking and interpersonal regret in children: An individual differences study

Abstract

The relations between prosocial risk taking (taking a risk to benefit another person; PSRT) and interpersonal regret (regret that one's choices have caused a poor outcome for another person) were examined in 192 children aged 7-9.PSRT was measured by children's choices within a gambling task in which one choice guaranteed participants a good prize whereas the other involved risking this prize to help a peer also win a good prize. Interpersonal regret was assessed within the same task by examining children's change in emotion when they learned they would have won a better prize for a peer had they chosen differently. Performance on this task was also examined in relation to sympathy and resource sharing. Findings indicated that the operationalizations of PSRT and interpersonal regret were meaningful. Children who took a prosocial risk were more generous in a resource sharing task. In some circumstances, children who took a prosocial risk were also more likely to experience interpersonal regret than those who did not take a prosocial risk, indicating that experiencing interpersonal regret may be related to individual differences in prosociality. However, experiencing interpersonal regret did not have a direct effect on subsequent prosocial behavior, when measured byThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Why imagining what could have happened matters for children's social cognition

“…In line with findings on counterfactual thinking discussed above, a number of studies suggest that children do not show evidence of experiencing regret until around the age of 6 (Guerini et al, 2020;McCormack et al, 2016;O'Connor et al, 2012;Van Duijvenvoorde et al, 2014;Weisberg & Beck, 2010). Moreover, research has found that children who experience regret make better choices in the future (McCormack et al, 2019;O'Connor et al, 2014O'Connor et al, , 2015, and feel bad if their choice led to a negative outcome for another child (Corbett et al, 2021;Corbett et al, 2022;Uprichard & McCormack, 2018). This body of work shows that counterfactual thinking about their own choices has consequences for how children feel and act (see McCormack et al, 2020 for review).…”

Perbedaan Perilaku Prososial Anak Usia Dini ditinjau dari Jenis Kelamin

“…Perilaku prososial di sekolah, seperti membantu dan berbagi, berkontribusi pada perkembangan individu yang positif, hubungan teman sebaya, dan iklim kelas (B. Corbett et al, 2023). Perilaku prososial lebih terlihat pada siswa yang lebih tua, perempuan, dan siswa dengan fungsi umum yang lebih tinggi, namun perilaku prososial teman sekelas tidak memengaruhi perilaku prososial individu di kemudian hari (B.…”