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Even very young children understand what devotion is. To prove this, scientists conducted a magical experiment. And they were surprised by its unexpected results.
Four- and five-year-olds were found to relate better to those of their peers who remained loyal to their losing team during a sports match, even when they were offered to move to the winning team.
These conclusions were made by psychologist Antonia Misch from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany). Together with colleagues, she conducted an experiment to test whether young children are ready to make sacrifices in order to remain loyal to their group. To participate in the study, they invited 48 four-year-olds and the same number of five-year-olds, while in each age group there were equal numbers of boys and girls.
Pass the tests
- What are you most devoted to?
- Does your child know how to protect themselves?
To begin with, each child was “introduced” to four puppets. Then the experimenter took out yellow and green scarves from the box, with their help the child himself and two puppets were assigned to a “team” of the same color (yellow or green), and two more puppets to another “team”. The researcher then asked the child to leave the room, ostensibly to help him find something. Upon returning, the child found that two dolls (from their own or someone else’s team) “hidden” the book. At the same time, the puppets “told” the child that the hidden book was a secret, and “asked” him not to tell anyone about it. After a while, the fifth puppet, which did not belong to either team (without a colored scarf), appeared and “said” that she knew that a secret was hidden in the room. In order for the child to betray the secret, the doll tried to “bribe” him with stickers.
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- He adored her, and she devotedly loved him
It turned out that children were much more likely to keep a secret when “their” dolls asked them to. 75% of them remained faithful to their group, and only 48% kept the secret of “foreign” dolls. The difference was observed in both age groups, although among four-year-olds it was minimal. Presumably, it is during the period from 4 to 5 years that children begin to truly understand what it means to be a member of a group and be faithful to it.
According to the authors, their experiment demonstrated a clear willingness of children to sacrifice their own interests for the sake of the social group to which they belong. It is noteworthy that in this case, the children showed loyalty to a very conditional “group”, in which they were first included only a few minutes ago. Researchers believe that in real groups, children’s loyalty is even more pronounced.
Подробнее см. А. Misch et al. «I won’t tell: Young children show loyalty to their group by keeping group secrets», Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, February 2016.