Children’s sharing behavior and social norms - DATABASE

<strong>Do social norms about generosity change children’s sharing decisions and beliefs?</strong> Although from an early age children understand fairness norms and even enforce them, it is not until late middle childhood that such norms could influence sharing behavior in children. However, no previous study has evaluated whether generous and selfish descriptive norms change not only children’s sharing decisions, but also their beliefs about how other children behave. In the current study, children between 4 and 10 years of age (<em>N </em>= 101) played two rounds of a dictator game; the first as baseline and the second one after being exposed to either a generous or a selfish descriptive norm. Our results showed that generous norms increased sharing decisions, but only in children older than 9 years old. Yet, this norm increased beliefs about others’ sharing behavior in all children. Selfish norms did not decrease sharing decisions nor beliefs in children. These results suggest that generous descriptive norms that were aligned with preexisting preferences towards fairness were more prone to change beliefs about others’ sharing behavior in children between 4 and 10 years old. Generous norms could also increase sharing decisions in late middle-aged children that had already internalized fairness norms. These results shed light on how descriptive norms model sharing preferences and could help to design interventions aimed to promote more cooperation and generosity in children.