Importance of Friendship and Minimal Group Membership in 4–6-Year-olds’ and 9–12-Year-olds’ Sharing Behavior in China

Abstract

Strategies for favoring close others, such as friends and in-group members, benefit individuals and society. Although younger and older children apply these sharing strategies, how they integrate these relationships remain understudied. Friendship and group membership sometimes conflict (e.g. a friend from another, even a rival group), driving the question of how children behave in such situations. To address this question, this preregistered study recruited 121 4–6-year-olds and 94 9–12-year-olds from a middle-class community in China. A 2 (friend vs. stranger) by 2 (in vs. out-group) between-subjects design was applied per age group. Participants were asked to share seven objects with a recipient, who was either a stranger, or a previously nominated friend and from an in- or out-group (manipulated in the Minimal Group Paradigm). The results showed that children in both age groups shared more with friends than with strangers. However, only 4–6-year-olds shared more resources with in-group members than with out-group ones. Moreover, 4–6-year-olds did not distinguish between an out-group friend and an in-group stranger, while 9–12-year-olds shared more with an out-group friend relative to an ingroup stranger, indicating that friendship outweighs minimal group membership only among 9–12-year-olds. Furthermore, there was an interaction between age and minimal group membership, implying a decrease in the minimal group effect between 4–6-year-olds and 9–12-year-olds. Accordingly, the implications of friendship and minimal group effects, and their relative influence on sharing during childhood are discussed.

Keywords:

• Sharing
• preschoolers
• children
• friendship
• minimal group

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on the osf (https://osf.io/y5ds3/?view_only=fa14c31ae30d464ab749ad0135b66527).

Notes

1 After reaching this minimum sample size, we aimed to check our hypotheses after every additional n = 10 participants. The data collection would be terminated as soon as the BF for any preregistered hypotheses was equal to or bigger than 10, or the 128 participants were collected.

2 The semi-closed area is in the back corner of the classroom. There is no door between this area and the main classroom. However, there is furniture (e.g., bookshelves) or walls on three sides to separate this area from the main classroom. We located our experimental settings so the children outside this area cannot directly observe the experiment. We also took 4 precautions to prevent disturbances during the experiment (please see online materials).

3 In the preregistration, we planned to stop the data collection if the second step model comparison showed BF > 10 for any preregistered hypotheses (Set 2, preregistered in Table 1).

Additional information

Funding

This project is supported by Jiangsu Province 2021 General Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research in Universities, under the grant number 2021SJA0245

Notes on contributors

Yue Song

Yue Song is an early-career scholar at Nanjing Normal University, China. She received her Ph.D. in Utrecht University. She is interested in the development of prosocial behaviors among toddlers and preschoolers, the links between these behaviors and happiness, and the socialization effects on these relationships. Her recent studies focus on how preschoolers adjust their sharing according to various social contexts.

Yunqing Shi

Yunqing Shi received her Master’s degree in 2022 at Nanjing Normal University. She is interested in the impact of the recipient’s social identity on sharing.

Yun Huang

Yun Huang received her Master’s degree in 2022 at Nanjing Normal University. She is interested in the impact of prospective sharing opportunities on sharing behaviors.

Fenglin Zang

Fenglin Zang received her Master’s degree in 2023 at Nanjing Normal University. She is interested in how family and daycare context may or may affect preschoolers’ prosocial behaviors such as sharing and helping.