Children share resources with others based on merit

Young children don’t just ‘share and share alike’ when it comes to dividing up sweets or toys – they split resources on merit and withhold them from the ‘incompetent’.

A study by psychologists at Liverpool Hope University said children’s attitudes to sharing are like those of workers who are ‘exasperated by lazy colleagues’.

Lead author Jim Stack and his team found that, when children are told to share, they give more to the peers they consider most worthy of a reward .

Even very young children are able to learn adult-like sharing behaviours, with pre-schoolers showing a ruthless streak when it comes to those they deem ‘unworthy’.

Young children don’t just ‘share and share alike’ when it comes to dividing up sweets or toys – they split resources on merit and withhold them from the ‘incompetent’

In the first of its kind study, published in the open access journal Plos One, the researchers examined the impact of performance on the way children share.

Stack and colleagues found that children will only share and show altruistic behaviours when it serves their own self-interests.

‘Naturally, we want our children to be pro-social and altruistic,’ developmental psychologist Dr Stack told The Times.

‘The fact these scenarios are being played out in children as young as three or four will probably come as a shock to many,’ he said.

Stack said that when a child shared less with a low-merit peer it’s not necessarily a bad thing as they are behaviours that appear to be driven by evolution.

He said those behaviours are likely crucial when it comes to negotiating life.  

‘It’d be nice to be generous in all instances, but it’s simply not the way the world works,’ Stack said.

The team analysed the behaviour of 131 children at nurseries in West Yorkshire and Lancashire while playing a game with a glove puppet.

The puppets were called Tommy the Tiger and Polly the Parrot and during the game the children were told the puppet was watching them.

The children had to identify pictures on 12 cards including items like balls, cats, drums and birds – with the puppet also giving answers.

In the game the children would name six cards and if they got it right would win stickers – the puppet would name the other six cards.

In one scenario the puppet got them all right and in the other the ‘incompetent’ puppet made mistakes.

When it came to sharing out the stickers the children who interacted with the incompetent puppet kept more of the stickers than those working with the successful puppet.

It was a stark difference between the puppet doing well and the one doing badly.

When working with the incompetent puppet the children kept 9.5 stickers for themselves on average.

When working with the successful puppet they would only keep an average of 7.5 stickers for themselves.  

A study by psychologists at Liverpool Hope University said children’s attitudes to sharing where like workers ‘exasperated by lazy colleagues’

“Young children are simply discerning in their sharing habits,’ Stack said.

‘If you’re working alongside someone else to acquire a common pool of resources, and your co-worker is incompetent, you would be much less inclined to want to share equally with that person,’ he told The Times.

The team say their findings, based on work with three and four-year-olds, suggest that they use similar analysis tools used by co-workers in an office.

These tools help them determine who to share with and develop merit-based sharing behaviours that they can use later in life. 

It’s well known that pre-school age is when children begin to develop an understanding of lying and false information.

However, the research team say they can’t determine from their findings whether this ‘false belief performance’ can predict sharing behaviours.

‘This warrants the need for follow-up studies that provide broader developmental measures of social understanding during and beyond the pre-school period.’