More intimate, more generous? Behaviour control can reduce children’s self-relevance effect in sharing behaviour

ABSTRACT

Children exhibit a self-relevance effect whereby they share more candies with close friends and acquaintances than with strangers. The present study aimed to reduce the negative consequences of self-relevance effects by enhancing the behavioural control of sharing behaviour. This study initiated two behavioural control levels to investigate sharing behaviours in children aged 5–6 years. Results revealed that children with high-behavioural control had elevated sharing levels compared with those with neutral behavioural control. Compared with strangers and acquaintances, children shared more with those who have close relationships with them. Switching from neutral behavioural control to high behavioural control can improve the range of children’s sharing level to strangers more than acquaintances and close friends. This suggests that the behavioural control did reduce the self-relevance effect, and the behavioural control was more effective in improving the children’s sharing behaviour with strangers than acquaintances and close friends.

KEYWORDS:

• Behaviour of sharing
• self-relevance effect
• behavioural control
• 5–6 years old

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 31671134]; Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province [grant number 2018JJ2254,2018JJ3341]; Hunan Provincial Department of Education Scientific Research General Project [grant number 18A006]; Hunan Province Philosophy Social Science Project [grant number 18YBQ095].

Notes on contributors

Geying Liang

Geying Liang is a graduate student from Department of Psychology at Hunan Normal University.

Wei Fan

Wei Fan is a professor from Department of Psychology at Hunan Normal University.

Zhiyuan Hu

Zhiyuan Hu is a teacher from the Kindergarten of Hunan University.

Wenjie Zhang

Wenjie Zhang is a lecturer from Department of Early childhood education at Hunan Normal University.

Yiping Zhong

Yiping Zhong is a professor from Department of Psychology at Hunan Normal University.