Museum of Science, Boston

Reasoning about Social Situations

Learning to navigate social situations is an important part of growing up. Some cognitive scientists study children in order to develop a better sense of how children perceive other people and how this might affect their social interactions.

Stickers

Are children generous or selfish?

It is widely believed that children are selfish and have difficulty learning how to share, but is this true? This study examined children's willingness to share with a child they have never met. We hoped to learn more about how children ages 3 - 6 learn to be generous.

In this study, children were placed in one of two conditions of the experiment. In one condition, we examined how the value of a “currency” affects children’s decisions--children selected their favorite and least favorite stickers from a set of four options. In another condition, we looked at how ownership affects children’s decisions--children were either told that all of the stickers belong to them or simply that they had to divide the stickers.

In both conditions, children were told that they can keep all the stickers or give some to a child who would come the next day. We placed a box over the stickers and the table so that children had privacy as they divided the stickers into two envelopes: one for them and one for the other child.

Our results thus far show that children become more likely to give stickers away as they get older, and they are more likely to divide the stickers equally as they approach six years of age. Children of all ages gave away more of the stickers they don’t like than the ones that they like. So, while personal preference seems to play a role, ownership seems to have no effect on children's generosity.

This study helped us better understand whether generosity is a learned behavior, or one that comes as a natural part of children’s development.


Other Resources

View a video of Dr. Peter Blake discussing this, and related research.

Learn about other research related to Reasoning about Social Situations.

This research is conducted by the Paul Harris Lab at Harvard University

Try it at the Museum

Mag-neato Engineering!

Watch your child build with the Mag-neatos (magnet ball and stick toys) on the second floor of the Discovery Center.

When playing, does your child share and trade Mag-neatos with other kids?

What types of Mag-neatos does your child share, if any?

With whom does your child work as a team?

Does your child seem to have any ideas about "fair" ways to share toys with their peers?

Try it at Home

Who is nicer?

Put two dolls side by side and place eight stickers or checkers in front of one doll and two stickers or checkers in front of the other. Ask your child who they think is nicer. Does your child favor the "wealthier" doll? What reasons do they give for thinking one doll is nicer than the other?

Are children selectively generous?

Create three stories with your child using six stickers and two dolls as props. Tell your child that the stickers belong to one doll and that the doll is going to share its stickers with the other doll. In one story have the two dolls be strangers, in another story say they are siblings, in a third say the dolls are friends. Have your child decide how many stickers the doll will share in each case. Does your child have the doll share the same amount of stickers in each story? How does the type of relationship between the dolls affect your child’s generosity?