Emotion makes a difference: Induced sadness reduces preschool boys' sharing behavior

This study investigated how external negative emotional stimuli influenced 5–6-year-old children's (N = 98) sharing behavior. Children were asked to watch a video that induced either sad or neutral emotion and then share stickers simultaneously with poor and wealthy recipients. Compared to the neutral emotion condition, boys shared less, and offered more self-focused reasons for sharing after being induced sad emotions; girls however, shared equally, and provided self-focused and other-focused reasons equally in both emotional conditions. Results indicated that sadness increased children's tendency to defend their own interest in boys but not in girls, which supports the evolutionary “male warrior hypothesis”. In addition, although children indicated that they liked the wealthy recipient better than the poor one, they shared equally between the two recipients, suggesting an early development of equality concern and charity behavior (i.e., care for the disadvantaged individuals). These findings revealed gender differences in the socio-affective processes underlying children's resource allocation and added developmental evidence for the adaptive function of negative emotions.
Source: Evolution and Human Behavior - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research