Preschool children's behavioral tendency toward social indirect reciprocity

PLoS One. 2013 Aug 7;8(8):e70915. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0070915. eCollection 2013.

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.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Child
  • Child Behavior / physiology*
  • Child Behavior / psychology
  • Child, Preschool
  • Cooperative Behavior
  • Emotions / physiology
  • Female
  • Helping Behavior*
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Peer Group*
  • Psychology, Child / methods
  • Social Behavior*

Grants and funding

Mayuko Kato-Shimizu was financially supported by Grant-in-Aid for Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellows (No. 22–3450, JSPS, http://www.jsps.go.jp/english/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.