ABSTRACT
The purpose of the current study is to examine the impact of earning stickers compared to receiving them for free on kindergarteners’ (5–6-year-old) sharing behaviours. Children’s sharing behaviours were measured with the Dictator Game. Seven weeks after the first application, each child performed a matching dots to numbers activity. Thus, each child gained stickers as a result of his/her endeavour and success. The results of one-way ANOVA and logistic regression did not reveal gender, age and income as significant contributors for young children’s sharing behaviours. The findings have shown that young children’s sharing behaviours significantly decrease when they earn stickers rather than receive them for free without any effort. In other words, children’s sharing behaviours decreased 10.4% when they were asked to share something that they had earned as a reward compared to when those rewards were just given to them for free.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Aslı Balcı
Aslı Balcı received her B.Sc. in Early Childhood Education from Atatürk University in Turkey. Currently, she is studying her M.S. in Early Childhood Education at Gazi University. She is a research assistant in Department of Early Childhood Education at Atatürk University. Her research interests include early childhood education curriculum, teacher education, parent education and involvement.
Hüseyin Kotaman
Dr. Hüseyin Kotaman received his BSc. Degree in Psychological Guidance from İstanbul University in Turkey. He obtained his Masters and Ph. D. degrees in Early Childhood Education from The Pennsylvania State University at University Park, USA. Currently, he is a faculty member in Department of Early Childhood Education at Harran University. He is an active researcher and his research interests include early childhood education, school readiness, emotional intelligence, teacher education, parent education and involvement, educational philosophy.
Mustafa Aslan
Mustafa Aslan received his BSc. Degree in Early Childhood Education from Bülent Ecevit University in Turkey. He obtained his Masters in Educational Sciences from Çukurova University in Turkey. Currently, he is an instructor in Department of Child Development at Harran University. His research interests include prosocial behavior of young children.