Intelligence and Prosocial Behavior:Do Smart Children Really Act Nice?

Results of previous studies of the relationship between prosocial behavior and intelligence have been inconsistent. This study attempts to distinguish the differences between several prosocial tasks, and explores the ways in which cognitive ability influences prosocial behavior. In Study One and Two, we reexamined the relationship between prosocial behavior and intelligence by employing a costly signaling theory with four games. The results revealed that the prosocial level of smarter children is higher than that of other children in more complicated tasks but not so in simple tasks. In Study Three, we tested the moderation effect of the average intelligence across classes, and the results did not show any group intelligence effect on the relationship between intelligence and prosocial behavior