Generous and fair: Children’s preferences for cooperative partners in India and Canada.

2025/07/14 by John Corbit · 1 citation
Health Professions · #Child and Adolescent Health

paper · doi:10.1037/dev0001998

Abstract

= 131 Female) from India and Canada. Children learned about the resource allocation behavior of two potential partners for a cooperative game. Each partner received one candy for themselves, one for a peer, and had an extra candy to either distribute (creating inequality) or discard (creating equality). On advantageous trials, partners could keep or discard the extra candy; on disadvantageous trials, they could give it to a peer or discard it. In both countries, children showed a greater tendency to choose partners who achieve equality by giving up a personal advantage, over those who achieve equality by preventing a partner from gaining an advantage, a tendency that increased with age. These findings reveal that children across diverse societies prefer cooperative partners who behave fairly by giving up a personal advantage and those who behave generously by allowing their partners to gain an advantage. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

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