To help your neighbor or being rewarded? Children's sharing behavior in situations involving merit and altruism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15448//1980-8623.2017.3.25746Keywords:
Sharing, Children, Game, Merit, Altruism.Abstract
Children use different principles to share goods, depending on their ages and the information available in the context of distribution, with a increasing preferency for egalitarianism and altruism as they grow up. In the current study children's distributive behavior was evaluated through an experimental situation in which issues involving personal merit and care were manipulated. A computer game during which children named animals and could decide how the reward should be shared was used. It was observed that children aged 11 to 12 years and those who received information about how their opponents would stay after losing the game tended to be more generous. In addition, more empathic children were less selfish. These results are discussed from the perspective of Martin Hoffman's theory, and from recent empirical findings in the field of distributive justice.
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