Teaching kids gratitude

RECENT experiments suggest that young children showed almost no awareness that they should repay favours to those who helped them in the past.

Helping those who help you

The principle of direct reciprocity – paying back those who have helped you in the past – is so central to everyday life that it’s often imbued with moral status.

In many societies, failure to return a favour can be considered a great offence.

We reasoned that if reciprocity is indeed something that evolved as a foundation of the way human beings interact with others, it should come naturally to young children.

To test this hypothesis, we designed a simple computer game for 4- to 8-year-olds. Children interacted with four avatars that we told them were other children playing the game. In one version, all of the “other children” received a sticker, leaving the child without any. But then one of the players gave their sticker to the child.

An expectation that must be learned

Young children may not respond to obligation, but researchers know they try to abide by social expectations. We wondered if children were simply unaware of the norm of returning favours.

So, we asked them. We used the same game as before, and children still received a sticker, but this time, we just asked: “Whom should you give to?” In this case, kids in the oldest age group we looked at, 7- and eight-year-olds, did systematically pick the person who had given a sticker to them.

Our results suggested that young children must learn the principle of direct reciprocity in order to apply it. – The Conversation