Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This study investigated how social class is related to children’s third-party intervention (TPI) tendency and forms (compensation vs. punishment). Children from different social class backgrounds watched short animated films depicting two cartoon characters making fair or unfair decisions in resource distribution scenarios. The results revealed that, compared to children from higher social classes, children from lower social classes were more likely to engage in TPIs in realistic distribution contexts. Moreover, when intervening, children from lower social class backgrounds were more inclined to both compensate victims and punish transgressors. These findings suggest that children’s tendencies to engage in TPIs differ across social classes from an early age, offering new insights into the development of children’s moral behavior from a cultural perspective.

Keywords

third-party intervention social class culture children

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Adams

G. S.

Mullen

(2015). Punishing the perpetrator decreases compensation for victims. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6(1), 31–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550614542346

Albrecht

von Essen

Fliessbach

Falk

(2013). The influence of status on satisfaction with relative rewards. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 804. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00804

Benenson

J. F.

Pascoe

Radmore

(2007). Children’s altruistic behavior in the dictator game. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28(3), 168–175. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2006.10.003

Boyd

Gintis

Bowles

Richerson

P. J.

(2003). The evolution of altruistic punishment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(6), 3531–3535. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0630443100

Bronfenbrenner

(1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard University Press.

Chen

Zhu

Chen

(2013). Family income affects children’s altruistic behavior in the dictator game. PloS One, 8(11), e80419. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0080419

Chudek

Henrich

(2011). Culture-gene coevolution, norm-psychology and the emergence of human prosociality. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(5), 218–226. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2011.03.003

Chudek

Zhao

Henrich

(2013). Culture-gene coevolution, large-scale cooperation and the shaping of human social psychology. In Sterelny

Joyce

Calcott

Fraser

(Eds.), Cooperation and its Evolution (pp. 425–457). The MIT Press.

Dhaliwal

N. A.

Patil

Cushman

(2021). Reputational and cooperative benefits of third-party compensation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 164, 27–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2021.01.003

10.

Ding

Chen

Van Lange

P. A.

(2017). The rich are easily offended by unfairness: Wealth triggers spiteful rejection of unfair offers. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 71, 138–144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.03.008

11.

Dubois

Rucker

D. D.

Galinsky

A. D.

(2015). Social class, power, and selfishness: When and why upper and lower class individuals behave unethically. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(3), 436–449. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000008

12.

Emler

Dickinson

(1985). Children’s representation of economic inequalities: The effects of social class. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 3(2), 191–198. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835X.1985.tb00971.x

13.

Faul

Erdfelder

Buchner

Lang

A. G.

(2009). Statistical power analyses using G*Power 3.1: Tests for correlation and regression analyses. Behavior Research Methods, 41(4), 1149–1160. https://doi.org/10.3758/BRM.41.4.1149

14.

Greenfield

P. M.

(2009). Linking social change and developmental change: Shifting pathways of human development. Developmental Psychology, 45(2), 401–418. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014726

15.

Greenfield

P. M.

(2013). The changing psychology of culture from 1800 through 2000. Psychological Science, 24(9), 1722–1731. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613479387

16.

Greitemeyer

Sagioglou

(2016). Subjective socioeconomic status causes aggression: A test of the theory of social deprivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111(2), 178–194. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000058

17.

Heck

I. A.

Shutts

Kinzler

K. D.

(2022). Children’s thinking about group-based social hierarchies. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 26(7), 593–606. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.04.004

18.

Henrich

Ensminger

McElreath

Barr

Barrett

Bolyanatz

Cardenas

J. C.

Gurven

Gwako

Henrich

Lesorogol

Marlowe

Tracer

Ziker

(2010). Markets, religion, community size, and the evolution of fairness and punishment. Science, 327(5972), 1480–1484. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1182238

19.

Henrich

McElreath

Barr

Ensminger

Barrett

Bolyanatz

Cardenas

J. C.

Gurven

Gwako

Henrich

Lesorogol

Marlowe

Tracer

Ziker

(2006). Costly punishment across human societies. Science, 312(5781), 1767–1770. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1127333

20.

Herrmann

Thoni

Gachter

(2008). Antisocial punishment across societies. Science, 319(5868), 1362–1367. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.115380

21.

Hong

Y. J.

Lin

R. M.

Lian

(2020). Social class and envy among Chinese undergraduates: Victim justice sensitivity as a mediator. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 48(6), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.9185

22.

House

B. R.

Kanngiesser

Barrett

H. C.

Yilmaz

Smith

A. M.

Sebastian-Enesco

Erut

Silk

J. B.

(2020). Social norms and cultural diversity in the development of third-party punishment. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 287(1925), 20192794. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.2794

23.

Jordan

J. J.

Hoffman

Bloom

Rand

D. G.

(2016). Third-party punishment as a costly signal of trustworthiness. Nature, 530(7591), 473–476. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature16981

24.

Jordan

J. J.

McAuliffe

Warneken

(2014). Development of in-group favoritism in children’s third-party punishment of selfishness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(35), 12710–12715. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1402280111

25.

Josephs

Kushnir

Gräfenhain

Rakoczy

(2016). Children protest moral and conventional violations more when they believe actions are freely chosen. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 141, 247–255. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2015.08.002

26.

Kim

Decety

Baek

Sankey

(2021). Neural computations in children’s third-party interventions are modulated by their parents’ moral values. NPJ Science of Learning, 6(1), 38. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-021-00116-5

27.

Kitayama

Salvador

C. E.

(2024). Cultural psychology: Beyond east and west. Annual Review of Psychology, 75, 495–526. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-021723-063333

28.

Korndörfer

Egloff

Schmukle

S. C.

(2015). A large scale test of the effect of social class on prosocial behavior. PloS One, 10(7), e0133193. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133193

29.

Kraus

M. W.

Côté

Keltner

(2010). Social class, contextualism, and empathic accuracy. Psychological Science, 21(11), 1716–1723. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610387613

30.

Kraus

M. W.

Horberg

E. J.

Goetz

J. L.

Keltner

(2011). Social class rank, threat vigilance, and hostile reactivity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37(10), 1376–1388. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167211410987

31.

Kraus

M. W.

Piff

P. K.

Keltner

(2011). Social class as culture: The convergence of resources and rank in the social realm. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(4), 246–250. https://doi.org/10.1177/096372141141465

32.

Kraus

M. W.

Piff

P. K.

Mendoza-Denton

Rheinschmidt

M. L.

Keltner

(2012). Social class, solipsism, and contextualism: How the rich are different from the poor. Psychological Review, 119(3), 546–572. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028756

33.

Kraus

M. W.

Tan

J. J.

Tannenbaum

M. B.

(2013). The social ladder: A rank-based perspective on social class. Psychological Inquiry, 24(2), 81–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2013.778803

34.

Kuang

Wang

Z. J.

(2021). Social class and children’s prosociality: A study in the context of China’s dual urban–rural structure. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 12(1), 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619887698

35.

Kuznetsova

Brockhoff

P. B.

Christensen

R. H. B.

(2017). LmerTest package: Tests in linear mixed effects models. Journal of Statistical Software, 82(13), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v082.i13

36.

Lee

Y. E.

Warneken

(2020). Children’s evaluations of third-party responses to unfairness: Children prefer helping over punishment. Cognition, 205, 104374. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104374

37.

Liu

Wang

Villberg

Torsheim

Tynjälä

Kannas

(2012). Reliability and validity of Family Affluence Scale (FAS II) among adolescents in Beijing, China. Child Indicators Research, 5, 235–251. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-011-9131-5

38.

Marshall

McAuliffe

(2022). Children as assessors and agents of third-party punishment. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1(6), 334–344. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00046-y

39.

Marshall

Mermin-Bunnell

Gollwitzer

Retelsdorf

Bloom

(2024). Cross-cultural conceptions of third-party intervention across childhood. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 153, 2216–2229. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001617

40.

Mathew

Boyd

(2011). Punishment sustains large-scale cooperation in prestate warfare. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(28), 11375–11380. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1105604108

41.

McAuliffe

Dunham

(2021). Children favor punishment over restoration. Developmental Science, 24(5), e13093. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13093

42.

McAuliffe

Jordan

J. J.

Warneken

(2015). Costly third-party punishment in young children. Cognition, 134, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2014.08.013

43.

McCullough

(2008). Beyond revenge: The evolution of the forgiveness instinct. John Wiley & Sons.

44.

Moya

Henrich

(2016). Culture-gene coevolutionary psychology: Cultural learning, language, and ethnic psychology. Current Opinion in Psychology, 8, 112–118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.10.001

45.

Newton-Fisher

N. E.

Thompson

M. E.

Reynolds

Boesch

Vigilant

(2010). Paternity and social rank in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) from the Budongo Forest, Uganda. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 142(3), 417–428. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.21241

46.

Ningbo Municipal Bureau of Statistics. (2018–2020). Ningbo Statistical Yearbook. Retrieved December 12, 2023, from http://tjj.ningbo.gov.cn/col/col1229042824/index.html

47.

Oishi

Graham

(2010). Social ecology: Lost and found in psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(4), 356–377. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691610374588

48.

Peretz-Lange

Harvey

Blake

P. R.

(2022). From “haves” to “have nots”: Developmental declines in subjective social status reflect children’s growing consideration of what they do not have. Cognition, 223, 105027. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105027

49.

Piff

P. K.

Kraus

M. W.

Côté

Cheng

B. H.

Keltner

(2010). Having less, giving more: The influence of social class on prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(5), 771–784. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0020092

50.

Piff

P. K.

Robinson

A. R.

(2017). Social class and prosocial behavior: Current evidence, caveats, and questions. Current Opinion in Psychology, 18, 6–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.06.003

51.

R Core Team. (2020). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org

52.

Raihani

N. J.

Bshary

(2015). Third-party punishers are rewarded, but third-party helpers even more so. Evolution, 69(4), 993–1003. https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.12637

53.

Ramsey

P. G.

(1991). Young children’s awareness and understanding of social class differences. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 152(1), 71–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221325.1991.9914679

54.

Riedl

Jensen

Call

Tomasello

(2012). No third-party punishment in chimpanzees. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(37), 14824–14829. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1203179109

55.

Riedl

Jensen

Call

Tomasello

(2015). Restorative justice in children. Current Biology, 25(13), 1731–1735. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.05.014

56.

Rossano

Rakoczy

Tomasello

(2011). Young children’s understanding of violations of property rights. Cognition, 121(2), 219–227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2011.06.007

57.

Salali

G. D.

Juda

Henrich

(2015). Transmission and development of costly punishment in children. Evolution and Human Behavior, 36(2), 86–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.09.004

58.

Sanmenxia Municipal Bureau of Statistics. (2018–2020). Sanmenxia Statistical Yearbook. Retrieved December 12, 2023, from http://tjj.smx.gov.cn/pageView/zhengfuxinxi.html?lmid=5380&rlmid=2551

59.

Santos

H. C.

Varnum

M. E.

Grossmann

(2017). Global increases in individualism. Psychological Science, 28(9), 1228–1239. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617700622

60.

Sawaoka

Hughes

B. L.

Ambady

(2015). Power heightens sensitivity to unfairness against the self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(8), 1023–1035. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167215588755

61.

Schmidt

M. F.

Tomasello

(2012). Young children enforce social norms. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21(4), 232–236.

62.

Singer

(2019). The relationship between watching animated cartoon and information processing speed and level for sample children in age group [5–6] years. Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews, 7(5), 1321–1337. https://doi.org/10.18510/hssr.2019.75171

63.

Stephens

N. M.

Townsend

S. S.

(2013). Rank is not enough: Why we need a sociocultural perspective to understand social class. Psychological Inquiry, 24(2), 126–130. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2013.795099

64.

Sun

Wang

Z. J.

Y. Y.

Chan

K. Q.

Miao

X. Y.

Zhao

Y.-Q.

B. M.

(2022). Trends of college students’ mental health from 2005 to 2019 and its rural-urban disparities in China. Journal of Affective Disorders, 302, 160–169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2022.01.042

65.

Vaish

Missana

Tomasello

(2011). Three-year-old children intervene in third-party moral transgressions. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 29(1), 124–130. https://doi.org/10.1348/026151010X532888

66.

van Doorn

Brouwers

. (2017). Third-party responses to injustice: A review on the preference for compensation. Crime Psychology Review, 3(1), 59–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/23744006.2018.1470765

67.

van Doorn

Zeelenberg

Breugelmans

S. M

. (2018). An exploration of third parties’ preference for compensation over punishment: Six experimental demonstrations. Theory and Decision, 85, 333–351. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11238-018-9665-9

68.

van Prooijen

J. W

. (2010). Retributive versus compensatory justice: Observers’ preference for punishing in response to criminal offenses. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(1), 72–85. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.611

69.

Wang

Z.-J.

Wang

Y.-M.

Wei

Zhang

T.-T.

Wang

Chan

K. Q.

(2024). Social class, schadenfreude, and children’s prosocial behavior in moral contexts. Emotion, 24, 1417–1427. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001363

70.

Ziv

Whiteman

J. D.

Sommerville

J. A.

(2021). Toddlers’ interventions toward fair and unfair individuals. Cognition, 214, 104781. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104781

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.31 MB

Social Class and Children’s Third-party Intervention Tendency and Forms

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material