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Extrinsic rewards diminish costly sharing in 3-year-olds

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    Two studies investigated the influence of external rewards and social praise in young children's fairness-related behavior.

    The motivation of ninety-six 3-year-olds' to equalize unfair resource allocations was measured in three scenarios (collaboration, windfall, and dictator game) following three different treatments (material reward, verbal praise, and neutral response). In all scenarios, children's willingness to engage in costly sharing was negatively influenced when they had received a reward for equal sharing during treatment than when they had received praise or no reward. The negative effect of material rewards was not due to subjects responding in kind to their partner's termination of rewards.

    These results provide new evidence for the intrinsic motivation of prosociality-in this case, costly sharing behavior-in preschool children.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1192-1203
    JournalChild Development
    Volume87
    Issue number4
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 16 Apr 2016

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