{"id":3501,"date":"2017-06-15T19:00:32","date_gmt":"2017-06-15T18:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/?p=3501"},"modified":"2024-05-11T22:33:43","modified_gmt":"2024-05-11T21:33:43","slug":"three-year-olds-upset-peers-selfish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/three-year-olds-upset-peers-selfish\/","title":{"rendered":"Three year olds get upset if their peers are selfish"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/cdev.12816\/abstract\">German study<\/a> paired three-year-old children and invited them to play a game that produced a reward only if the two collaborated.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers watched how the children reacted under three conditions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>One child intentionally \u201cdefected\u201d from the collaborative activity and obtained a different, unshared reward \u2013 \u201cselfishness\u201d.<\/li>\n<li>One child was not able to operate the game \u2013 \u201cignorance\u201d.<\/li>\n<li>The apparatus broke, preventing one child from playing the proper role \u2013 \u201caccident\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The reactions of the other child were very different in these three situations, all of which had the same result \u2013 the failure of the game.<\/p>\n<p>The response to selfishness was blame and emotion, demonstrating a moral understanding that the other child was doing wrong \u2013 \u201cHey, what are you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The response to ignorance was more likely to be helpfulness \u2013 an attempt to teach the unknowing child how to play the game. As long as the partner appears willing to collaborate, three-year-olds don\u2019t believe that, \u201cignorance is no excuse.\u201d Rather, they have an intrinsic desire to help those in need.<\/p>\n<p>The response to the apparatus breaking was much less emotional, with any blame directed at the apparatus itself, not the other child.<\/p>\n<p>A team of researchers from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eva.mpg.de\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Max Planck Institute<\/a> in Leipzig, Germany, and from <a href=\"https:\/\/psychandneuro.duke.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Duke University<\/a> in Durham, USA, worked with 72 boy-boy and girl-girl pairs of children.<\/p>\n<p>The game was cleverly constructed. To obtain two marbles (one for each player), both partners had to pull on a rope together to move a block toward the two marbles. It was impossible to pulling on the rope alone or to access both ends of the rope, which made collaboration necessary. When two partners pulled together, the block moved and pushed the marbles from their platform, and the marbles rolled toward two separate openings where the players could retrieve them. The children could then insert their marbles into an opening in an elephant-shaped \u201cjingle machine\u201d behind the apparatus as a reward. The game was presented to them as \u201cfeeding the elephant\u201d. Both ropes were not immediately accessible but had to be retrieved from the back of the apparatus by moving a detachable handle (with the rope magnetically attached to it) along a zigzag-shaped track. Only if both children moved their handles with the rope to the front could the joint pulling begin.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3511\" style=\"width: 1138px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3511\" class=\"wp-image-3511\" src=\"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/selfish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1128\" height=\"1117\" srcset=\"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/selfish.jpg 900w, https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/selfish-300x297.jpg 300w, https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/selfish-768x760.jpg 768w, https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/selfish-288x285.jpg 288w, https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/selfish-50x50.jpg 50w, https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/selfish-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1128px) 100vw, 1128px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-3511\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/adammclane\/8997069041\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Adam McLane<\/a>. Creative Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>For the \u201cselfish\u201d condition, one child was taught to play the game differently \u2013 detaching the handle to open a box with a red sticker and a picture of an elephant. For this child, \u201cfeeding the elephant\u201d meant putting the red sticker on the elephant picture. This left the other child stranded.<\/p>\n<p>For the \u201cignorant\u201d condition, one child was taught to pull the rope in a way that worked in training trials, but not in the actual game. The other child had been exposed to this \u201cmistake\u201d in practice trials, so had the knowledge to teach the \u201cignorant\u201d child how to get it right.<\/p>\n<p>The research sheds new light on how very young children perceive others\u2019 intentions, and how important it is to them that others stay committed to obligations.<\/p>\n<p>The study also further demonstrates three-year-olds\u2019 sense of fairness in a collaborative situation, which has also been demonstrated in other earlier research. In one <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eva.mpg.de\/documents\/Wiley-Blackwell\/Hamann_Children_ChildDev_2012_1562278.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">earlier experiment<\/a>, also involving two three-year-olds collaborating for a joint reward, if one child unexpectedly received an earlier or bigger reward, the chances were that the lucky child would share the bounty with the unlucky one.<\/p>\n<div class=\"retrofit-references\">\n<h4>References<\/h4>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 1.8em;\"><em> Kachel U, Svetlova M &amp; Tomasello M (2017), <a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/cdev.12816\/abstract\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Three-year-olds\u2019 reactions to a partner\u2019s failure to perform her role in a joint commitment<\/a>, Child Development<\/em><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The response to selfish behavior was blame and emotion, a moral understanding &#8211; \u201cHey, what are you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":3513,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[438],"tags":[460],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3501"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21120,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3501\/revisions\/21120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}