The current study aimed to test a suite of psychological proximate mechanisms thought to underlie prospective reciprocity - engaging in cooperative acts with the anticipation that benefits will be returned in the future. We developed and validated a novel online test battery with 297 participants to assess individual differences in three domains (planning, patience, risk tolerance) and their relation to participants' responses across different prospective reciprocity tasks. Tasks assessing patience showed high internal consistency and were positively associated with cooperative behaviour across all three prospective reciprocity tasks. The pattern was less clear for risk, with associations varying across tasks, and planning ability was negatively correlated with one prospective reciprocity task. Across the prospective reciprocity tasks, performance showed limited convergence, indicating that forward-looking cooperative behavior is context dependent rather than reflecting a unitary, domain-general tendency. Taken together, our results show that planning, patience, and risk tolerance each contribute to forward-looking cooperation in task-specific ways, underscoring the need for improved psychometric approaches.

When children form opinions about what the moral thing to do is and how they should act, they often look at what others are doing. That is, their injunctive norms about what they should do is influenced by descriptive norms of what people actually do. However, it remains unclear how exactly these regularities in the social environment influence different kinds of normative beliefs: To what extent do children flexibly tune their beliefs depending on the frequency and type of behavior? We examined this question in 6-9-year-olds (N = 138) from the US in a preregistered study, asking whether children’s injunctive beliefs, moral evaluations, behavioral intentions, and punishment ratings are influenced by descriptive norm information that a behavior is relatively common or uncommon. Since children readily distinguish between different categories of normative behaviors, we explored whether the influence of descriptive norm information varies depending on the category of normative behavior. Specifically, because the coronavirus pandemic offered a natural case study of novel norm learning, we explored this question in relation to COVID-related behaviors which children have only more recently acquired. Participants saw eight vignettes spanning four categories of behavior—negatively valenced conventional, positively valenced conventional, personal preferences, and COVID-related health behaviors—in which they either received a strong descriptive norm that the behavior was common or a weak descriptive norm that the behavior was uncommon. By 6 years of age, children’s injunctive beliefs, moral evaluations, and behavioral intentions were more influenced by strong than weak descriptive norms across behaviors with the exception of the personal preferences, in which they were largely insensitive to the descriptive norm or were more influenced by weak than strong descriptive norms. Punishment judgements were also influenced by the commonality of the behavior, although this varied across behaviors. Our findings suggest that, by middle-childhood, children’s injunctive and moral beliefs are influenced by the strength of descriptive normative information and, more broadly, point to the bottom-up influences of children’s normative beliefs.

Why do people punish wrongdoers when they are not personally affected? Researchers on costly third-party punishment have long debated whether such behavior reflects strategic self-interest or a moral commitment to fairness and justice. Recent developmental evidence offers important insights into this question. We argue that the origins of costly third-party punishment in early childhood are best explained by nonstrategic moral concerns. Young children selectively punish norm violators, incur personal costs to do so, and intervene even when they stand to gain nothing-often without reputational incentives or expectations of future benefit. Empirical studies indicate that children's punishment is driven by egalitarian norms, retributive motives, and efforts to alleviate victims' distress. In contrast, strategic motivations, such as reputation management and self-protection, appear only later in development. These findings challenge the view that third-party punishment is grounded in self-interest and instead support the idea that a concern for justice underlies the earliest forms of human norm enforcement. We conclude that whereas strategic considerations may shape punishment in adolescence and adulthood, they build upon an early-emerging moral foundation centered on fairness and justice.

How do children reason about fairness when transgressors receive different consequences for the same misdeed? In a pre-registered study with N = 122 participants at 6 to 9 years, we investigated how children evaluate unequal norm enforcement (punishment vs. leniency) and how they integrate a transgressor's knowledge state about the inequality into their emotion attributions. Results showed that children revised their emotion attributions depending on whether the transgressor was aware of being treated differently. Children initially attributed happiness to an unpunished transgressor or sadness to a punished transgressor. However, they subsequently attributed mixed emotions such as guilt or sadness combined with relief to transgressors who learned about the inequality but not to transgressors who only knew about the punishment to the self. These results suggest that children reflect not only on the consequences to the individual but also on the transgressors' knowledge about whether a meta-norm of equality has been violated.

ABSTRACT How do children represent an individual's traits when choosing partners for a collaborative task? We examined whether 5‐ to 9‐year‐olds ( N = 89) generalize fairness and competence within and across the domains of problem‐solving ability and fairness, and how these inferences shape collaborative decisions. In a pre‐registered study, children observed two characters differing in fairness or competence and evaluated them in new situations. Children of all ages generalized traits within domains, but younger children also made cross‐domain generalizations (e.g., assuming a fair character was also competent). This suggests a developmental shift from broad to domain‐specific reasoning. Trait inferences and partner preferences showed parallel developmental patterns, indicating that evaluations of fairness and competence are both inferred and meaningfully applied. The study highlights how children's social cognition becomes more refined with age. Future research should examine how this developmental shift toward domain‐specific reasoning shapes children's real‐world collaborative choices and peer relationships.

Trusting selectively is a crucial ability in successfully navigating social environments: trusting a trustworthy partner maximizes mutual benefits; withholding trust from an untrustworthy partner minimizes chances of being exploited. Here, we ask how children's trust expectations and experienced trustworthiness inform their own trust decisions. Using a child-friendly repeated Trust Game, we employ a computational modeling approach to examine how children learn about the trustworthiness of others through experience and adjust their own trust behaviors. We tested N = 96 children ages 6-11 years who played 40 trials of the game as trustors with a trustworthy and an untrustworthy trustee. Regression analyses showed that overall, children shared more with trustworthy than untrustworthy partners and older children shared overall more than younger children. Computational models provided a more fine-grained analysis of the learning pattern: a reinforcement learning model that included parameters for individual variation in prior trust expectations and a parameter quantifying the behavioral adjustment over time provided the best fit for the data. Using this computational approach, we could ascertain that children's behavioral adjustments became less responsive over time, suggesting a shift toward more stable patterns of trust once initial impressions were formed. Together, these findings shed light on the development of children's trust interaction with novel partners and highlight the opportunity that computational modeling provides in capturing developmental differences in trust behaviors.Summary Children aged 6-11 used experience to distinguish trustworthy from untrustworthy partners in a repeated Trust Game, sharing more with the trustworthy than the untrustworthy partner. Older children shared more than younger children, although they were not significantly differentiating between the trustworthy than the untrustworthy partner. Reinforcement learning modeling suggested that children updated trust expectations from experience, with age-related differences in the efficiency of impression updating. These findings highlight both children's capacity in flexibly adjusting their economic trust behaviors and the value of computational modeling in studying economic trust development.

Collaboration requires individuals to find partners who are adept at problem-solving and act fairly when sharing the spoils of joint labor. Given that individuals might vary along both dimensions, it can create a dilemma with the challenging decision of whether to prioritize a potential partner’s capacity to perform a task or the partner’s level of fairness in sharing obtained resources. Here we tested whether young children can solve this dilemma when two potential partners have opposing qualities: One partner is high in the capacity to solve a problem but less likely to share fairly, whereas the other partner is lower in capacity but fair. In two studies with a total of N = 188 children aged 4 to 6 years, we found that children adjust their decisions based on the social context and the perceived difficulty of the collaborative task: Children show an overall preference for fair partners when collaborating in an easy task, but they choose partners high in problem-solving capacity and low in fairness when collaborating in a more difficult task. These results show that already young children can evaluate others along two dimensions and make trade-offs between capacity and fairness when deciding what is more relevant for a given situation.

Punishment is often perceived as a natural and unavoidable consequence for transgressions, serving to enforce social norms and promote fairness. However, children's understanding of punishment raises intriguing questions about their expectations for consistency and fairness in its application, especially when faced with unequal consequences for similar actions. This study examines children's responses to unequal punishment and the emotions they attribute to characters facing different consequences for identical transgressions. Across two experiments with a total of N = 189 children at 6 to 9 years of age, we investigated how they respond to situations in which individuals receive unequal punishment for the same transgression. Results show that when reasoning about these norm violations, children apply meta-norms-higher-order principles that regulate how norms should be enforced. Specifically, after seeing the teacher's response to the first transgressor, children expected the second transgressor to receive the same consequence-whether punishment or leniency-rather than favoring one treatment over the other. Moreover, children attributed mixed emotions to both punished and unpunished transgressors, suggesting that punishment may serve as a form of emotional relief that alleviates guilt. These results contribute to the understanding of children's complex moral reasoning, including their sensitivity to fairness in norm enforcement and their nuanced emotional attributions in contexts of unequal treatment.

Third-party punishment of unfairness shows striking cross-societal variation in adults, yet we know little about where and when in development this variation starts to emerge. When do children across societies begin to pay a cost to prevent unfair sharing? We present an experimental study of third-party punishment of unfair sharing across N = 535 children aged 5–15 from communities in six diverse countries: Canada, India, Peru, Uganda, USA, and Vanuatu. We tested whether children were more likely to punish equal or selfish (maximally unequal) distributions between two absent peers. We also tested whether decisions depended on whether such punishment was costly—participants had to sacrifice their own rewards to punish—or free. Our study generated three main findings. First, children across societies engaged in third-party punishment of selfishness: they were more likely to punish selfish than equal distributions. Second, older children were more likely than younger children to punish selfish sharing in Canada, India, Peru, and the USA. Third, children in Canada and the USA punished more in general in the Free condition than in the Costly condition, whereas children in Uganda punished selfishness more in the Costly condition. These findings show that children from six diverse societal contexts consistently took a stance against unfair sharing, in some cases even sacrificing their own rewards to intervene against selfishness in their peers. We highlight and discuss similarities and differences in cross-societal patterns of age-related differences in third-party punishment and suggest potential explanations for these patterns. Third-party punishment of unfair sharing is a hallmark of a normative concern for fairness in adults. Here, children in Canada, India, Peru, Uganda, USA, and Vanuatu show this same normative concern by punishing peers—sometimes even at personal cost—who have shared unfairly.

Framing public-health behaviors as benefiting others, rather than the self, can increase behavior uptake in adults. However, there are mixed results on the effects of such messaging in a vaccination context, and it is unclear how children reason about the social and moral implications of vaccination. In this study, we present school-aged children (N = 60) with hypothetical vaccine-like behaviors and manipulate whether they benefit the self or others, and whether they prevent low or high severity harm. We find that children readily endorse these behaviors when they prevent high severity harm, and that the beneficiary of the behavior does not impact children's endorsement. Younger children thought vaccine-like behaviors were morally important regardless of who they protected; However, as children get older, they thought about the vaccine-like behaviors in moral terms when they protected others. We discuss potential implications for how communications about vaccination may impact children's reasoning about others.

Reciprocity is a cornerstone of human cooperation, motivating individuals to assist each other at a personal cost, resulting in mutual long-term benefits. However, reciprocity can conflict with honesty norms, such as when returning favors to previous benefactors requires individuals to act dishonestly. The resulting moral dilemmas are difficult to navigate even for adults, yet developmental research has almost exclusively focused on the prosocial aspects of reciprocity. To explore the developmental origins of this conflict, we investigated 5- to 8-year-old children's evaluations of and engagement in prosocial cheating to return a favor. In Study 1, children evaluated protagonists in hypothetical scenarios who cheated to benefit others whom they did or did not owe a favor. Across ages, children condemned cheating and favored honesty over reciprocity from a third-party perspective. In Study 2, children participated in two games in which they had the opportunity to cheat (by peeking behind a barrier or misreporting die-rolling outcomes, respectively) to win prizes for an adult partner who had either previously shared a valued resource with them (reciprocity condition) or not (control condition). Across ages, children were more likely to benefit a partner by cheating when they owed them a favor than when they did not owe them a favor. These findings suggest that children as young as 5 are willing to disregard honesty in favor of reciprocating prosocial acts, highlighting the developmental origins of a tension between interpersonal obligations and moral norms. SUMMARY: In two studies, we investigated 5- to 8-year-old children's evaluations of and engagement in prosocial cheating and prosocial cheating to return a favor. From a third-party perspective, children strongly endorsed rule compliance and condemned cheating, even when it helped someone else. When acting themselves, children cheated to benefit a partner, especially when the partner had previously done them a favor. The results reveal that reciprocity can override honesty norms in early childhood, shaping moral decision-making.

It has been shown that with age, US children become more likely to prefer equal over unequal allocations and do so in an impartial way for both ingroup and outgroup members. However, it is possible that such findings are based on norms of impartiality that are more common in Western societies than in collectivistic societies which place a greater emphasis on group loyalty. For example, children from a collectivist society might endorse ingroup-favoring allocations more than equal allocations or outgroup-favoring ones. In this pre-registered study, n = 205 5- to 12-year-olds from the US and South Korea saw hypothetical scenarios in which a child divided resources (e.g., chocolates) between their ingroup and outgroup. Group membership was manipulated using a minimal group paradigm based on team colors. Children evaluated equal, ingroup-favoring, and outgroup-favoring allocations. Results showed that children from both samples overall evaluated equal allocations most positively. However, Korean children judged ingroup-favoring allocations more acceptable and less deserving of punishment than did US peers. Both results were consistent across ages, suggesting the developmental stability of these effects from middle childhood into early adolescence. We discuss how the current results provide insight into cross-cultural differences in fairness norms.

Does political partisanship extend to childhood? To what degree are children, a largely non-political population, impacted by parents' and communities' political orientations? We examined children's behaviours and attitudes during a politically divisive event - the COVID-19 pandemic. Children (4- to 12-year-olds; N = 313) of liberal (vs. conservative) parents reported greater preventive COVID-19 behaviours, such as mask wearing and physical distancing, and responded more positively to these health behaviours. At the community level, children living in Democratic-voting (vs. Republican-voting) U.S. counties more strongly endorsed preventive COVID-19 behaviours. Political orientation was a better predictor than education, income, religiosity, population-density, and infection rates. Mediation and moderation analyses revealed that the parent-child political link was driven by children's perceptions of their parents' guidance, behaviours, and concern about COVID-19, and that this link was attenuated in Democratic- versus Republican-voting counties. Political orientation appears to play an unexpectedly prominent role, both at the intimate family and broader community level, in determining children's behaviours and attitudes.

Children pay a cost to punish third parties for unfairness. However, theoretical debates highlight that such behaviors could reflect a strategic attempt to manipulate others in future interactions. The personal deterrence hypothesis claims that punishment is motivated to deter future unfairness towards punishers. Here we tested this hypothesis with a total of n = 248 5-to-10-year-olds. In two experiments, participants witnessed that a divider shared resources either fairly or selfishly with a third party. Participants learned that the same divider (same divider condition) or a new divider (different divider condition) would subsequently decide how to share resources with the participant. If children’s punishment is motivated by personal deterrence, they should punish unfairness more often in the same divider condition (versus different divider). Conversely, if children fear retaliation from dividers, they should punish dividers less often in the same divider condition (versus different divider). Children intervened by taking resources away from the divider (Experiment 1) or by sending a disapproving or an approving verbal message (Experiment 2). Children were more likely to punish unfair than fair allocations through material punishment and disapproving messages, while being more likely to reward fair than unfair allocations by sending approving messages. However, children did so at the same level regardless of their future divider’s identity. We discuss how these results speak to a children’s emerging concern with fairness and how it challenges the notion that children punish for self-oriented reasons as suggested by the personal deterrence hypothesis.

Humans frequently benefit others strategically to elicit future cooperation. While such forms of calculated reci-procity are powerful in eliciting cooperative behaviors even among self-interested agents, they depend on advanced cognitive and behavioral capacities such as prospection (representing and planning for future events) and extended delay of gratification. In fact, it has been proposed that these constraints help explain why calculated reciprocity exists in humans and is rare or even absent in other animals. The current study investi-gated the cognitive foundation of calculated reciprocity by examining its ontogenetic emergence in relation to key aspects of children's cognitive development. Three-to-five-year-old children from the US (N = 72, mostly White, from mixed socioeconomic backgrounds) first completed a cognitive test battery assessing the cognitive capacities hypothesized to be foundational for calculated reciprocity. In a second session, children participated in a calculated reciprocity task in which they could decide how many resources to share with a partner who later had the opportunity to reciprocate (reciprocity condition) and with a partner who could not reciprocate (control condition). Results indicated a steep developmental emergence of calculated reciprocity between 3 and 5 years of age. Further analyses showed that measures of delay of gratification and prospection were important predictors of children's rate of calculated reciprocity, even when controlling for age and after including a measure of verbal ability. By contrast, theory of mind abilities were unrelated to children's reciprocal behavior. This is the first systematic investigation of essential cognitive capacities for calculated reciprocity. We discuss prospection and delay of gratification as two domain-general capacities that are utilized for calculated reciprocity and which could explain developmental as well as species-differences in cooperation.

A key aspect of children's moral and social understanding involves recognizing the value of helpful behaviors. COVID-19 has complicated this process; behaviors generally considered praiseworthy were considered problematic during the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study examined whether 6- to 12-year-olds (N = 228; residing in the United States) adapt their evaluations of helpful behavior in response to shifting norms. Specifically, we presented children with scenarios featuring helpful and unhelpful actions that involved physical interaction (e.g., hugging) or nonphysical interaction (e.g., recruiting a teacher); although all children were tested during the COVID-19 pandemic, stories portrayed individuals either before or during COVID-19. While children generally judged helpfulness positively and unhelpfulness negatively, children exhibited a selective shift in their judgments for COVID-19 scenarios: children considered helpfulness negatively and unhelpfulness positively if helping required physical interaction. These findings demonstrate that children flexibly tune their social evaluations of helping to align with evolving norms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced novel public health mea-sures such as masking and social distancing. In adults, framing these behaviors as benefiting others versus the self has been shown to affect people's perceptions of public health measures and willingness to comply. Here we asked whether self-versus other-oriented frames of novel public health measures influence children's endorsement and moral reasoning. Children aged 5 to 10 years viewed hypothetical dilemmas of aliens in which we manipulated the frame (other-oriented or self-oriented) of the pre-vention behavior and the severity (high or low) of the potential harm. Across two studies (Study 1: N = 48; Study 2: N = 61), results showed that across ages framing the behaviors as other-oriented, but not self-oriented, yielded more positive ratings of individuals who followed the public health measures and more negative rat-ings of those who did not. Across both frames, children generally endorsed these public health measures when the severity was high. Children used more moralizing concepts in other-oriented frames and were more critical of intentional transgressions over accidental transgressions, demonstrating further evidence that other-oriented frames induce moral reasoning. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these framing effects for sociomoral reasoning and action. (c) 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.