Thinking of me: Self-focus reduces sharing and helping in seven- to eight-year-olds

By 7-to 8-years of age, most children readily adhere to prosocial norms aimed at benefiting others through giving up time and effort (helping) or resources (sharing). Two studies explored whether sharing and helping by 7-to 8-year olds (N = 180) could be influenced by priming children’s attention on themselves or their friends through a semi-structured interview. Results revealed that self-priming led to reductions in both sharing and helping compared to friendship-priming or a control condition. These findings are considered as indicative of the fragile state of prosocial behaviours at this age that can be easily shifted towards more selfish biases by simple priming.7至8岁年龄段的多数儿童已能够自觉恪守亲社会规范（prosocial norms），通过牺牲时间与精力开展助人行为，或割舍资源进行分享行为以惠及他人。两项研究共纳入180名7至8岁儿童作为被试，旨在探究通过半结构化访谈（semi-structured interview）启动儿童将注意力聚焦于自身或同伴，是否会对其分享与助人行为产生影响。结果显示，相较于友谊启动组与对照组，自我启动组儿童的分享与助人行为均出现显著减少。本研究结果表明，该年龄段儿童的亲社会行为处于易受干扰的脆弱状态，仅通过简单启动即可使其向更具自私偏向的行为模式偏移。