Papers Accepted

1. Chernyak, N; Kushnir, T, Inferring One's Own Prosociality Through Choice: Giving Preschoolers Costly Prosocial Choices Increases Subsequent Sharing Behavior, Cooperative Minds Social Interaction and Group Dynamics Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society Cogsci 2013 (January, 2013), pp. 2040-2045.
   (last updated on 2026/01/18)

   Abstract:
   Prosociality emerges early in ontogeny, but the mechanisms driving its early-emergence are not well understood. We propose that the experience of choice is tied to the expression of children's prosocial behavior. In Experiment 1, preschoolers shared with a puppet by either making a Costly Choice (giving a resource they could have kept for themselves), Non-Costly Choice (giving a resource that would otherwise be thrown away), or No Choice. Subsequent prosociality was measured by allowing children to share with a new puppet. While most children shared initially, children who were given costly choices shared more with the new puppet. Experiment 2 replicated this result using a different manipulation for Costly vs. Non-Costly choices. Experiment 3 found that preschoolers were more likely to infer that actions are intentional when they are costly. Results suggest a prosocial construal hypothesis: that children rationally infer their prosociality through making difficult, autonomous choices.