Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The present research builds on prior work on the social-contextualnature of children’s generosity by systematically examining bothobserver effects and whether the recipient is an in-group or out-group member. Although previous research has examined thesefactors independently, no study to date has examined them inconjunction. We also extend prior research by including bothmeasures of sharing behavior and children’s evaluations of sharingscenarios, and by investigating a larger sample (N=164) with abroader age range than is typical of prior research (5- to 9-year-olds). We found that, across the entire age range tested, childrenwere generous when observed and gave more to in-group membersthan out-group members, and that there was no interaction betweenthese effects. We also found that children’s own sharing behaviorpredicted their evaluations of sharing scenarios, with childrenrating in-group sharing as "nicer" than out-group sharing.