Why don’t kids want to share?

As a recent study showed, young children want to be generous. But they are divided incorrectly, because they still do not know how to determine the exact number of items.

The guest of the laboratory is a three-year-old girl. She is asked to share colored stickers with the doll, but she only gives away a smaller portion. For psychologists, this behavior is quite predictable and age appropriate. The father, who is watching the experiment, is confused. He worries that his daughter’s abilities may be underestimated, and tries to explain: “At home, she always says that you need to share! She must have been a little confused.»

Developmental psychologists believe that everything is normal. But the parents, who have been touched more than once by what a caring and generous child they have, are worried: why does she behave differently? Who is right? Parents who have devoted many hours to their daughter and know her inner world, or psychologists who follow standard protocol and strive for unbiased conclusions about the level of development of a young personality? Both are right, but it’s not that simple.

A few years ago, psychologists Greg Smith, Peter Blake, and Paul Harris noted that young children’s notion of fairness can be paradoxical. Preschoolers generally recognize that values ​​should be shared equally, but act differently. It would seem, where is the logic: if you know what is right, then why do you do the opposite? It turns out that children are hypocritical: they try to look good in words, but in reality they are not going to please someone?

There is some truth in this, but children should not be suspected of black deceit. The reluctance to share is largely due to cognitive immaturity. In particular, it is associated with insufficiently developed counting skills. It’s not that they don’t want to, they don’t yet understand what it means to share honestly.

How Counting Helps Sharing

During the preschool years, children go through several important developmental milestones that determine their ability to share. First, they memorize the numbers by ear: «one», «two», «three». Then they associate numerals with specific concepts: when a three-year-old child is asked to bring two apples, he remembers what “two” means. And only then do they understand the basic principles of counting and begin to put them into practice. If a child sees ten objects in front of him and can count them, we can say that he has mastered the initial counting skills. This is not only the basics of mathematics, but also the key to understanding how to share, the authors of the study say.

In the first experiment, a group of preschoolers were given two simple tasks. They were given a pack of beautiful stickers each and introduced to a sad doll who also wanted stickers. The children were faced with a dilemma: keep all the treasures for themselves or give them to the poor thing? Specialists recorded how many stickers each gave. Then the children were divided into two groups according to the test results. «Basic level» — those who know the basic principles of counting, «Initial level» — those who understand the meaning of the numerals «one», «two», «three».

It is natural that children of four or five years old found it easier to cope with the task. They took half of the stickers for themselves and gave the rest to the doll. Children of two or three years old did not manage to share equally.

What explains this different behavior? It can be assumed that older children have already learned that it is fair — this means in half. But all participants, regardless of age and outcome, said they gave «as much as they needed,» which implies that the youngest also understood what was expected of them.

As it turned out, the ability to distribute fairly really depends on the ability to count. At the base level, there were twice as many who shared the stickers equally as at the entry level. What is most remarkable, age has nothing to do with it. A three-year-old who can count is more likely to share honestly than a five-year-old who has not yet learned to count.

Most kids want to be fair

Now about the children who could not share equally. Are they really selfish or just don’t know what it means to be fair? Assuming that children act out of pure selfishness, they should take the lion’s share of the stickers. But if they just can’t count accurately, you can expect both generosity and greed. They can err on the big side and deprive themselves, or on the smaller side and deprive others.

And so it happened: half of the children kept most of the stickers for themselves, the other half showed exceptional generosity. At the same time, both of them hardly understood what was wrong. Many tried very hard to do justice, but failed to correctly count the number.

But what if kids who haven’t yet mastered numeracy really don’t realize that it’s better to be honest? Psychologists recruited a group of children from two to five years old to find out how they would share candy. They were offered to keep most of it or to divide it equally and clearly showed what this means. And then they re-tested their counting skills. Most of the participants chose the “fair” option, that is, they realized that sharing equally is good. Of course, it is necessary to make an adjustment for age: older children have a better attitude towards honesty. But the ability to count has nothing to do with a sense of justice.

Children are great at learning to do it honestly, but they are not able to cope with this task until they learn the basics of counting. What is elementary mathematics? Children cannot give away the right piece of property if they do not know how to determine the total amount. The concept of equal parts in the thinking of a child is primarily associated with the ability to count.

There are other reasons as well. By learning to count, children can test their accuracy. “By eye” you can pour about half a bowl of strawberries, but only by counting the berries one by one, you can make sure that everyone got half. The experiment showed that the children who shared equally, immediately figured out how many stickers to give to the doll, this was helped by the ability to count.

Can it be argued that all children are noble and will show generosity when they learn to count? Probably not. In many cases, they become greedy, for example, when they are required to give something to a stranger. But if the child refuses to share the way he was taught, do not rush to get upset that you are growing a stubborn egoist. You need to notice how he behaves in different situations and remember that he still lacks experience.

Source: greatergood.berkeley.edu