Effects of Cooperation and Competition on Preschoolers' Prosociality Toward Third-Parties

Abstract

Humans interact permanently. These interactions are transient and vary across situations. One characteristic of interactions is their social interdependence—the relationship between individuals’ goals. Social interdependence can take different forms: cooperative, competitive, or solitary. This dissertation investigated the influence of these forms of social interdependence on children’s sharing and social inclusion. Past research suggests that cooperative interdependence promotes and competitive interdependence lowers the willingness to act prosocially as compared to solitary contexts. These effects occur within and after respective interactions. Further, previous studies indicate that cooperation and competition affect prosociality toward third-parties who were not part of the interaction. However, many of these studies have low experimental rigor since the comparability between the experimental conditions is relatively low. For example, researchers compared cooperative games that cannot be lost with competitive games in which one party necessarily loses. This and other substantial differences between the experimental conditions do not allow for robust conclusions about the effects of cooperation and competition since alternative explanations might elicit these (e.g., fear of losing). Also, past research did not consider important variables, such as success or failure during the cooperation or competition, as predictors for children’s prosociality. Finally, most studies investigated children’s sharing behavior and neglected other prosocial behaviors, such as social inclusion. Thus, we conducted three studies with high internal validity (i.e., high comparability between conditions) to examine the effect of cooperation and competition on preschoolers’ sharing and social inclusion while considering children’s success and engagement in these interactions as potential predictors. In all studies, participants were from Leipzig and had mixed socio-economic backgrounds. In Study 1, dyads of 4- to 5-year-old children played a coordinative game in either a cooperative, competitive, or solitary context. Hereafter, we assessed three prosocial measures: sharing, social inclusion, and prosocial acts in free play. Children shared an endowment of stickers with a third-party peer. We measured children’s social inclusion behavior in a newly developed paradigm. In this social inclusion task, children play a ball-tossing game with a puppet while a second puppet approaches the interaction asking to join the game. We observed whether and how often children included the approaching puppet. Finally, dyads engaged in a free play, in which prosocial acts have been coded. Results revealed that children shared more stickers after playing in a cooperative as compared to a competitive context. The contexts of the game did not influence children’s social inclusion or prosocial acts in free play. In the social inclusion paradigm, children were highly inclusive, which raises the question of whether a ceiling effect has diminished the potential effect of cooperation and competition. In Study 2, we tested 3- to 6-year-olds’ social inclusion behavior with a modified version of Study 1’s task. The modified version aimed to overcome the detected ceiling effect. Study 2 investigated how social inclusion behavior develops throughout preschool age and how different inter-group scenarios influence this behavior. We found children’s social inclusion to increase from age 3 to 6. Children’s willingness to include an approaching puppet was lower when this puppet was an out-group member joining an in-group interaction as compared to a control condition without groups. Study 3 conceptually replicated Study 1’s procedure in an intergroup context. Similar to Study 1, dyads of 4- to 6-year-olds played a game in a cooperative, competitive, or solitary context. Here, the game was not coordinative, and we controlled wins and losses in the game to increase internal validity and to isolate the effect of mere goal relations as the cause for Study 1’s effect. After playing the game, children shared stickers with a third-party in-group and out-group member. Also, we assessed children’s social inclusion behavior in an intergroup context with Study 2’s modified version of the task. The cooperative, competitive, and solitary context of the game did not influence children’s sharing and social inclusion. In a merged analysis and a general discussion, the results of all three studies are combined and interpreted. In total, our results suggest that cooperative and competitive relations of goals only influence children’s prosocial behavior toward third-parties if interactions are highly coordinated.:1. General Introduction 2. Study 1: Cooperative Games and Preschoolers’ Prosociality 3. Study 2: Social Inclusion in Preschooler 4. Study 3: Cooperation, Competition, and In-Group Bias in Preschoolers 5. Merged Analyses 6. General Discussion References Curriculum Vitae Scientific Publications and Conference Contributions Declaration of Authorship Contributions of Author