Sharing

When and how do children learn to share with others?

From an early age, a lot of us have learned that "sharing is caring". How do children develop fairness-related beliefs?

Over the years, psychologists have tried to explore this question by presenting children with different sharing tasks. One example of how psychologists test sharing is a task called a Dictator game.

In this game, children will be told that they get to make decisions about candies like M&Ms.

Then, a researcher will put, for example, 10 M&Ms in front of the child, and tell the child that these M&Ms belong to them and they can do whatever they want with them. They can keep as many as they want for themselves in their bag or give the rest of the candies away to another boy or girl who will come here to play the game later.

Simple as this Dictator Game may sound, we can actually add all kinds of variations to this task!

For example, will children share more with another child if an adult or a friend is looking at them while they are distributing the M&Ms compared to when they are left alone?

Will children share more with the other child if we change that person’s identity, for example, to someone who really likes M&Ms, or someone who is really hungry?

Will children share more with another child if they know that there is a chance that the other child can refuse to accept the offer - resulting in neither of them being able to get any treats?

This last variation is called a Ultimatum Game, here is an example:

Questions to consider

Is it harder for the younger children to share compared to older children?

How can children learn to share more with others?

What are some of the considerations that may affect a child's decision about how much to share with someone else?

If you choose this topic, you will...

• Learn about different types of games that can test children’s willingness to share

• Consider what can affect children’s sharing behavior and how this develops over time