Developmental Psychology © 2013 American Psychological Association

2014, Vol. 50, No. 3, 914 –921 0012-1649/14/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0034169

The Development of Recipient-Dependent Sharing Behavior and Sharing

Expectations in Preschool Children

Markus Paulus Chris Moore

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Dalhousie University
and University of Erfurt

This study investigated the development of sharing expectations and sharing behavior in 3 groups of 3-,
4-, and 5-year-old children. We examined (a) whether preschool children expect a person to share more
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with a friend than with a disliked peer and (b) whether their expectation about others’ sharing behavior
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depends on whether there is a cost or not. Additionally, (c) we assessed children’s own sharing behavior
toward the different recipients in the same situation. The results show that expectations about sharing and
actual sharing follow similar developmental pathways and that recipient-dependent sharing and sharing
expectations emerge around 4 years of age. Moreover, individual-level analyses provide evidence that by
5 years of age, children’s own sharing and their expectations of others’ sharing are closely related to each
other.

Keywords: prosocial development, sharing, friendship, peer relations, cognitive development

Sharing is part of social life and plays a very important role in
the formation and maintenance of relationships. Being used to the
fact that people share with each other, humans develop expecta-
tions about others’ prosocial behavior. For example, if someone is
hungry and meets a friend who has cookies, he has reason to
expect that his friend will share his cookies with him. As this
example illustrates, expectations about others’ prosocial behavior
play an important role in the regulation of relationships (cf. Berndt,
2002; Gifford-Smith & Brownell, 2003). Such knowledge is im-
portant for behavioral planning and supports proper functioning in
the social environment. However, little is known about the devel-
opment of these expectations in early childhood. Moreover, it is
largely unclear how preschool children’s expectations about oth-
ers’ sharing relate to their own sharing behavior, that is, whether or
not they develop in parallel and whether or not they are related to
each other.
Research on the development of prosocial behavior has indi-
cated that from early in life children behave prosocially toward
others (e.g., Brownell, Svetlova, & Nichols, 2009; Dunfield &
This article was published Online First August 26, 2013.
Markus Paulus, Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-
Universität München, Munich, Germany, and Department of Psychology,
University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany; Chris Moore, Department of Psy-
chology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
This research was supported by a grant to Markus Paulus from the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and by a European
Research Council advanced grant, Dividnorm Project 269616. Thanks are
due to Monika Wörle for assistance with the project as well as to the St.
Martin and St. Josef kindergartens in Penzing and the St. Margareta
kindergarten in Schwifting, Germany.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Markus
Paulus, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Leopoldstrasse 13,
80802 Munich, Germany. E-mail: markus.paulus@lmu.de
914
Kuhlmeier, 2010; Kärtner, Keller, & Chaudhary, 2010; Paulus,
Kühn-Popp, Licata, Sodian, & Meinhardt, 2013; Vaish, Carpenter,
& Tomasello, 2009; Warneken & Tomasello, 2007; Zahn-Waxler,
Radke-Yarrow, Wagner, & Chapman, 1992; for a recent review,
see Paulus & Moore, 2012), including sharing resources with
others (e.g., Rheingold, Hay, & West, 1976; Svetlova, Nichols, &
Brownell, 2010; Thompson, Barresi, & Moore, 1997). Interest-
ingly, preschool children do not share in every situation to the
same extent, but their sharing behavior is affected by factors such
as the nature of the social cues provided by the helpee (Svetlova et
al., 2010), the amount of resources available (Hay, Caplan, Castle,
& Stimson, 1991), the relative distribution of resources (Paulus,
Gillis, Li, & Moore, 2013), or a shared history of previous collab-
oration (Warneken, Lohse, Melis, & Tomasello, 2011). Moreover,
it has been shown that children’s prosocial behavior increasingly
depends on the other’s gender (e.g., Hay, Castle, Davies, Dem-
etriou, & Stimson, 1999) and their relationship with the other (e.g.,
Birch & Billman, 1986; Fehr, Bernhard, & Rockenbach, 2008),
suggesting that early sharing behavior becomes more selective in
the course of the preschool years (Hay & Cook, 2007). Moore
(2009), for example, provided evidence that 4.5- to 6-year-old
preschool children share more with friends than with disliked
peers. Additionally, research has shown that children’s sharing
behavior depends on whether there is a cost to themselves or not.
In particular, preschool- and school-aged children will choose an
equitable distribution of resources more often when there is no cost
to themselves than when there is a cost to themselves (Fehr et al.,
2008; Thompson et al., 1997). These results provide clear evidence
that from the preschool age onward people’s personal relations to
another person and the costs related to sharing affect their moti-
vation to share with another. However, as research has mainly
focused on children’s own inclination to share with others, less is
known about children’s developing expectations of other people’s
sharing behavior.
 DEVELOPMENT OF SHARING BEHAVIOR AND SHARING EXPECTATIONS
The aim of the current study was to examine the development of
sharing expectations in the preschool years. Furthermore, we
aimed to investigate whether children’s own sharing behavior is
related to their expectations of others’ sharing. Knowledge about
children’s expectations of other’s sharing would be informative for
a number of reasons. First, it would reveal the expectations that
guide children’s interactions with other people—an important part
of social information processing (cf. Crick & Dodge, 1994). More
concretely, it would show how and when young children acquire
knowledge of which kind of sharing behavior to expect from
different people. Second, such knowledge would be informative
for research on the development of concepts of social relation-
ships, in particular the development of an understanding of friend-
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ship (e.g., Laursen & Hartup, 2002). Finally, studying the relation
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between sharing expectations and sharing behavior would be in-
formative for research and theory on the relation between action
perception and production. Given that recent findings suggested a
tight relation between own behavior and expectations of other
people’s actions (e.g., Gredebäck & Melinder, 2010; Sommerville
& Woodward, 2005), it would be interesting to examine whether
this tight relation holds also in the realm of prosocial behavior.
Two lines of research are informative with respect to our knowl-
edge of children’s expectations of others’ sharing. One line of
research assessed children’s behavior in resource distribution sce-
narios. Commonly, in these scenarios children are presented with
a number of resources, which do not belong to them, and different
potential recipients. They are asked to distribute all the resources
between recipients or to judge different resource allocations (e.g.,
Damon, 1977; Kenward & Dahl, 2011; McGillicuddy-De Lisi,
Watkins, & Vinchur, 1994; Olson & Spelke, 2008). For example,
Olson and Spelke (2008) asked 3.5-year-old children to help a
protagonist distribute resources between pairs of different potential
recipients. The results showed that the children guided the protag-
onist to give more resources to friends and siblings than to strang-
ers. These findings are informative for research on prosocial de-
velopment. Yet, in this task children could never decide to share
own resources. This task differs thus from studies on children’s
expectations of others’ prosocial and sharing behavior, as these
behaviors require that agents can act prosocially and share some of
their own goods— or not.
The second line of developmental research that directly exam-
ined children’s expectations of others’ prosocial behavior is re-
stricted to only a few studies (e.g., Berndt, 1981; Schmidt &
Sommerville, 2011). Berndt (1981) paired 5- to 10-year-old chil-
dren with either a friend or a close acquaintance. He interviewed
the children and asked for their intentions to behave prosocially
toward their partner in different hypothetical situations. Interest-
ingly, he also asked children about their partner’s expectation of
whether the child would help him or share with him. He reported
no effect of partner type. Yet, it is possible that the interview
technique underestimated children’s expectations and that the
presence of the other person affected children’s answers in terms
of a social desirability bias. One result that confirms this view has
recently been provided by Schmidt and Sommerville (2011). They
presented 15-month-old children with a habituation-based proce-
dure in which fair (i.e., equal) and unfair (i.e., unequal) resource
distributions were presented. The authors found that infants looked
longer at the unequal than at the equal distribution, indicating an
early expectation for fair distributions. Additionally, the results
915
showed that the infants who looked longer at the unequal than the
equal distributions were also more likely to share with another
person. Moreover, a recent study by Henderson and colleagues
(Henderson, Wang, Matz, & Woodward, 2012) indicates that after
active experiences in a collaboration paradigm, 10-month-old in-
fants were able to understand other persons’ common collaborative
goal. These findings open up the possibility that sharing behavior
and sharing expectations are related to each other. Indeed, a
number of studies in developmental and cognitive psychology
have suggested that action production and action perception are
closely related (e.g., Daum, Prinz, & Aschersleben, 2011; Grede-
bäck & Melinder, 2010; Paulus, Hunnius, Vissers, & Bekkering,
2011; Sommerville & Woodward, 2005; for reviews see Decety &
Sommerville, 2003; Meltzoff, 2007). Findings about a close rela-
tion between own sharing and sharing expectations on the level of
the individual would suggest that children have acquired a schema
or conceptual representation on how to behave in sharing situa-
tions that is likewise applicable to self and other (Barresi & Moore,
1996). In sum, the reviewed literature shows that young children
have expectations that a person will share with another person and
provides some evidence for a possible relation between sharing
behavior and sharing expectations. Yet, it remains unclear how
these initial expectations change and develop in the course of the
preschool years, how they become more differentiated and, in
particular, whether they are affected by the relationship between
sharer and recipient or the costs associated with sharing.
To this end, we presented preschool children with two tasks—a
task in which they could share themselves and a task in which they
had to predict other people’s sharing behavior—and investigated
the relation between both tasks. As previous studies have provided
evidence for recipient-dependent sharing in 4.5- to 6-year-old
children (Moore, 2009), we decided to investigate three different
age groups, 3-, 4-, and 5- to 6-year-old children, in an active
sharing task and in a sharing expectation task. We included friends
and disliked peers as potential recipients. The aim of this experi-
ment was threefold: First, given that previous research has shown
that 4.5- to 6-year-old children’s sharing is recipient-dependent,
we wanted to examine the development of this behavior by exam-
ining a broader age range of children. Second, we were interested
to see whether the development of children’s own sharing behavior
and their expectations of others’ sharing would show the same
developmental timeline. Third, we investigated individual-level
associations between children’s own sharing behavior and their
expectations of others’ sharing.
Method
Participants
The final sample included 18 3-year-old children (range 3 years
2 months to 3 years 11 months; M ⫽ 43.0, SD ⫽ 2.7; 4 boys), 17
4-year-old children (range 4 years 1 month to 4 years 11 months;
M ⫽ 54.7, SD ⫽ 3.5; 10 boys), and 19 5- to 6-year-old children
(range 5 years 1 month to 6 years 4 months; M ⫽ 69.6, SD ⫽ 5.8;
9 boys). Two 3-year-old children were tested but not included in
the final sample due to refusal to continue the study and due to
procedural errors. The participants attended one of three day care
centers located in the surroundings of a larger German city. Chil-
dren were native German speakers from heterogeneous socioeco-
 916 PAULUS AND MOORE
nomic backgrounds. Informed consent for participation was given
by the children’s caregivers. The participants received stickers for
their participation.
Materials and Procedures
Children were tested individually in a quiet room in one of three
day care centers. Experimental sessions were scored online by the
experimenter and videotaped for later reliability coding. The child
was seated at a child table opposite the experimenter. In the
following, we first introduce the Other task, before explaining the
Self task.
Other task.
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Materials. For the Other task, children were presented with
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three toy bears. The bears were of different colors and were
wearing differently colored T-shirts. For every participant, one of
the toy bears represented the protagonist, one bear represented the
protagonist’s friend, and one bear a disliked peer. The roles of the
bears were counterbalanced across participants. Each of the bears
had an envelope, in which his items could be put. Children were
told that each bear would keep his stickers. As items for the Self
and the Other task, stickers and balloons were used (counterbal-
anced between tasks).
Procedure. Initially all bears were placed on the table by the
experimenter. The experimenter then introduced the bears to the
child. The color of the bears’ shirts served as their names (e.g., red
bear, blue bear). First, the protagonist was introduced by his name.
Furthermore, the participants were told that the bear lives in a city
where he goes to kindergarten or school every day and where he
meets other bears. Subsequently, the other bears were introduced
and their relationship to the protagonist was highlighted by stress-
ing their common/not common activities (cf. Bigelow, 1977).
After the introductions, the child was asked to identify each of the
bears and their relation to the protagonist. Children were corrected
if they misremembered any of the bears, and the procedure was
repeated until the child remembered the relationship between the
bears. To assure that children’s performance was not affected by
memory problems, the relationships between protagonist and re-
cipient were repeatedly described in each trial.
After the presentation of the three bears, the experimenter in-
troduced the task. First, he took some of the items (i.e., stickers or
balloons) and presented them to the child. Then, he explained that
they were going to play a game. In this game, the protagonist was
told that sometimes he could choose items just for himself and
sometimes for both himself and another bear. Every bear was
supplied with an envelope, and children were informed that every
bear’s items would be put in his envelope. Furthermore, it was
emphasized that the protagonist really likes the items and tries to
collect them. Then, children were told that in each trial they had to
indicate what they think that the protagonist was going to do.
After receiving the instructions, children performed a practice
trial. The experimenter put a single sticker and two stickers on the
table. Participants were asked if the protagonist would choose the
single sticker or two stickers. If children choose one sticker, they
were told that having two stickers is more fun than having one
sticker and another practice trial was administered. In these prac-
tice trials, three of the 3-year-old children, three of the 4-year-old
children, and four of the 5-year-old children opted for one item.
When these children were presented with a second practice trial,
two of the 3-year-old children, one of the 4-year-old children, and
two of the 5-year-old children still opted for one item.1
Children were then presented with three blocks of trials. Each
block contained one trial of each of four trial types. The trial
types resulted out of the factorial combination of the factor
Recipient (friend, disliked peer) and the factor Choice Type
(prosocial, sharing). In each trial, the experimenter put the
respective number of stickers on the table, and children had to
choose between two options (establishing a mini-dictator game;
cf. Gummerum, Keller, Takezawa, & Mata, 2008). In the proso-
cial trials, the protagonist (e.g., yellow bear) could choose to
take one sticker for himself only (1,0 alternative) or to take one
sticker for himself and one sticker for the other bear (e.g., blue
bear; 1,1 alternative). More specifically, the experimenter said,
“Yellow bear can have one sticker for himself and no sticker for
his friend blue bear or one sticker for himself and one sticker
for his friend blue bear. What do you think yellow bear would
do?” In the sharing trials, the protagonist (e.g., yellow bear)
could choose to take two stickers for himself (2,0 alternative) or
to take one sticker for himself and one sticker for the other bear
(e.g., blue bear; 1,1 alternative). More concretely, the experi-
menter said, “Yellow bear can have two stickers for himself and
no sticker for his friend blue bear or one sticker for himself and
one sticker for his friend blue bear. What do you think yellow
bear would do?” Trial order as well as the order of the choices
offered in each question (i.e., equitable or inequitable) were
counterbalanced among blocks and participants.
At the beginning of the study, after introducing the protagonists,
we assessed all children for their knowledge about the relation-
ships between the bears in a first memory check.2 All children
were able to correctly label the bears and their relationships.
Furthermore, at the end of the study, we assessed approximately
one randomly chosen third of the 3- and 4-year-old children for
their knowledge about the relationships between the bears in an
additional memory check. More concretely speaking, they were
first asked to name the bears. Then, for every recipient, they were
asked whether or not he is a friend of the protagonist bear. All six
of the 3-year-old children who were asked remembered the rela-
tionships correctly. Out of eight 4-year-old children who were
asked, one committed one mistake. This shows that children were
able to correctly represent the relations between the agents in-
volved in the tasks.
Self task.
Materials. Materials of the Self task included a number of toy
figures (Playmobile), which differed in hair color, skin color, and
clothing. Children were asked to think about a good friend (i.e.,
they were asked to think about someone they like to play with) and
a disliked peer (i.e., someone they do not like to play with) and to
name these specific individuals. Then, they were asked to choose
two toy figures that best represented these two persons. Every toy
figure had an envelope, in which her items could be put. Children
were told that the envelopes would go to the respective person
after the study had ended. During the entire experimental sessions,
1
Excluding the children who insisted in opting for one sticker in the
Other task or the Self task did not change the pattern of results across all
age groups.
2
Owing to an experimenter error, this part of the protocol was not
performed for two 5-year-old children.
 DEVELOPMENT OF SHARING BEHAVIOR AND SHARING EXPECTATIONS 917

the experimenter referred to the two toy figures by using the

individuals’ names.
Procedure. The procedure for the Self task was modified after
Moore (2009) and was closely related to the procedure of the Other
task with the crucial difference that the children were themselves
the protagonists who were paired with either one of two toy figures
who represented their friend or their disliked peer. That is, they
were presented with the same blocks and trials as in the Other task
and could decide whether they wanted to share with their friend
and disliked peer, respectively.
In the practice trial, children could decide to take one or two
stickers. One 3-year-old child, three 4-year-old children, and four
5-year-old children opted for one item. When these children were
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presented with a second practice trial, the 3-year-old child, two

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4-year-old children, and no 5-year-old child opted still for one

item.
In the memory check, all children were able to correctly label
the figures and the relationships. At the end of the study, all
assessed children remembered the relationships.
Design. Taken together, children received both tasks (Self and
Other task). In each task, children were presented with three blocks
of four trials each. Thus, overall, children received 24 trials. The
four trial types resulted out of the factorial combination of the
factor Recipient (friend, disliked peer) and the factor Choice Type
(prosocial, sharing). Trial order as well as the order of the choices
offered in each question (i.e., equitable or inequitable) were coun-
terbalanced among blocks and participants. The order of task
presentation (Self- or Other-task first) was counterbalanced be-
tween participants. Furthermore, we decided to use different re-
source types for each task: stickers and balloons. The assignment
of resource types to task (i.e., Self or Other) was counterbalanced
between participants.

Data Analysis
Data were coded online by the experimenter. For each trial,
participants received a score of 0 if they chose the inequitable (1,0)
or (2,0) option and a score of 1 if they chose the equitable (1,1)
option. All children completed all trials. Scores were recorded as
proportional measures of equitable choices for each trial type. To
assess interrater reliability, 11 randomly chosen children were
recoded by a second person blind to the purpose of the study.
Pearson’s correlations were calculated for each trial type sepa-
rately. The analysis shows that the correlation coefficients ranged
from r ⫽ .96 to r ⫽ 1.

Results
Figure 1 shows the descriptive statistics for each age group and
task. Data were analyzed using a 2 ⫻ 2 ⫻ 2 ⫻ 3 mixed-model
repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) with the within-
subjects factors Recipient (friend, disliked peer), Trial Type
(prosocial, sharing), and Task (Self sharing, Other sharing) as well
as the between-subjects factors Age Group (3 years, 4 years, 5
years). A preliminary analysis including the factors gender, order
of presentation, and items yielded no significant effects of these
factors so that they were dropped from the main analysis.
The analysis yielded a main effect of recipient, F(1, 51) ⫽
30.596, p ⬍ .001, ␩2 ⫽ .38, which was further qualified by an
Figure 1. Mean proportion of trials on which participants choose the
equitable (1,1) option as a function of trial type (prosocial or sharing),
recipient (i.e., friend or disliked peer), and task (Self, Other). A: Shows the
results for the 3-year-old children. B: Shows the results for the 4-year-old
children. C: Shows the results for the 5- to 6-year-old children. Error bars
indicate standard errors of the means.
interaction between recipient and age, F(2, 51) ⫽ 5.120, p ⬍ .01,
␩2 ⫽ .17. Furthermore, the analysis revealed a main effect of trial
type, F(1, 51) ⫽ 18.497, p ⬍ .001, ␩2 ⫽ .27 (all other ps ⬎ .06),
showing that children took the equitable option more often in the
 918 PAULUS AND MOORE
prosocial trials (M ⫽ .79, SE ⫽ .03) than in the sharing trials (M ⫽
.70, SE ⫽ .03).
To explore the interaction effect, we averaged the data across
the self and other task and conducted separate 2 ⫻ 2 ANOVAs
with the within-subjects factors Recipient (friend, disliked peer)
and Trial Type (prosocial, sharing) for every age group. The
ANOVA for the 3-year-olds revealed only a significant effect of
trial type, F(1, 17) ⫽ 9.812, p ⬍ .01, ␩2 ⫽ .37 (all other ps ⬎ .11),
showing that the 3-year-old children chose the equitable option
more often in the prosocial (M ⫽ .84, SE ⫽ .04) than in the sharing
trials (M ⫽ .71, SE ⫽ .05). The ANOVA for the 4-year-old
children revealed a main effect of Recipient, F(1, 16) ⫽ 8.774, p ⬍
.01, ␩2 ⫽ 0.35, indicating that the 4-year-old children opted more
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often for the equitable option when the friend was involved (M ⫽
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.91, SE ⫽ .03) than when the disliked peer was involved (M ⫽ .63,
SE ⫽ .08). There was also a marginal effect of trial type, F(1,
16) ⫽ 4.171, p ⫽ .058, ␩2 ⫽ .21 (all other ps ⬎ .09), suggesting
a trend that children chose the equitable option more often in the
prosocial (M ⫽ .82, SE ⫽ .04) than in the sharing trials (M ⫽ .73,
SE ⫽ .05). The ANOVA for the 5-year-olds revealed a main effect
of Recipient, F(1, 18) ⫽ 20.344, p ⬍ .001, ␩2 ⫽ .53, showing that
children chose the equitable option more often when the friend was
the recipient (M ⫽ .91, SE ⫽ .03) than when the disliked peer was
the recipient (M ⫽ .46, SE ⫽ .09), and an effect of trial type, F(1,
18) ⫽ 4.904, p ⬍ .05, ␩2 ⫽ .21 (all other ps ⬎ .39), indicating that
the 5-year-old children chose the equitable option more often in
the prosocial trials (M ⫽ .72, SE ⫽ .05) than in the sharing trials
(M ⫽ .66, SE ⫽ .05). In sum, the separate ANOVAs revealed
effects of Recipient for the 4- and 5-year-olds, but not the 3-year-
old children. Moreover, the analyses revealed effects of Trial Type
for every age group.
To further investigate direct interrelations between children’s
sharing behavior and their sharing expectations, we followed the
group-level analyses (i.e., ANOVAs) up by conducting correla-
tional analyses between children’s performances in both tasks. As
trial type (i.e., prosocial trials, sharing trials) had a constant effect
across both tasks and across all age groups (i.e., was orthogonal
with respect to the other variables), we averaged across the two
trial types to generate an overall sharing measure for each recipient
(friend, disliked peer) in each task (Self, Other). To build differ-
ence scores for the Self and Other task, we subtracted the propor-
tion of equitable decisions with the disliked peer from the propor-
tion of equitable decisions with the friend (indicating how much
better the friend is treated than the disliked peer). For the 3-year-
old children, the difference scores for the Self and Other tasks were
not significantly related (r ⫽ .27, p ⫽ .29). For the 4-year-old
children, the relation approached significance (r ⫽ .42, p ⫽ .09).
For the 5-year-old children, the difference scores were highly
correlated with each other (r ⫽ .66, p ⬍ .01), indicating that the
more the 5-year-old children differentiated in their own sharing
behavior between friends and disliked peers the more they ex-
pected the same behavior from the others.
To investigate age-related changes in the interrelation between
children’s own generosity and their expectations of others’ gener-
osity, we calculated for every participant an average score for
generosity (i.e., proportion of equitable options chosen) shown by
the self and expected from the other (across trial type and recipi-
ent). For the 3- and 4-year-old children there was a positive,
though not significant relation (r ⫽ .20, p ⫽ .42, and r ⫽ .29, p ⫽
.25, respectively). For the 5-year-olds, children’s own generosity
and their expectations of others’ generosity was significantly cor-
related with each other (r ⫽ .68, p ⫽ .001), suggesting that the
more the 5-year-old children were themselves inclined to act
generously the more they expected another agent to act generously.
Discussion
This study aimed at investigating developmental changes in 3-,
4-, and 5-year-old children’s sharing behavior and their expecta-
tions of others’ sharing: in the Self task, they could distribute
valuable items between themselves and a friend or a disliked peer;
in the Other task, they were asked to predict how another agent
would distribute valuable items between himself and a friend or a
disliked peer. Additionally, whether sharing was costly for the
agents or not was manipulated. The results showed similar age-
related changes for both tasks. Children of all age groups behaved
more prosocially and expected more prosocial behavior from an-
other protagonist when the choice bore no cost. Moreover, the 4-
and 5-year-old children, but not the 3-year-old children, differen-
tiated between a friend and a disliked peer as potential recipients
in the sharing and the sharing expectation task, suggesting devel-
opmental changes in preschool children’s sharing behavior and
their expectations of others’ sharing.
Furthermore, we found a clear relation between 5-year-old chil-
dren’s own sharing behavior and their sharing expectations. Al-
though the 3- and 4-year-old children showed similar patterns in
the Self and the Other task on a group level, no corresponding
results emerged on a personal level. This suggests that the relation
between sharing behavior and sharing expectations is itself subject
to developmental changes as it only emerged strongly at 5 years of
age. In sum, our study suggests that early prosocial development
undergoes an increasing differentiation and hierarchical integra-
tion in the course of the preschool years.
Overall, three findings of the present study are noteworthy.
First, extending previous work on recipient-dependent sharing
(e.g., Fehr et al., 2008; Moore, 2009), the current study points to
developmental changes with 3-year-old children not differentiating
between different recipients and with 4- and 5-year-old children
showing a clear differentiation. Nevertheless, the 3-year-old chil-
dren decided to act prosocially in the majority of trials. The lack of
recipient-dependency in 3-year-olds’ sharing suggests that they
have a general tendency to behave prosocially toward others. This
might be based on their developing understanding of others’ pref-
erences (cf. Fawcett & Markson, 2010), for example, knowledge
that stickers or balloons are desired items, and on a general
prosocial motivation (Warneken & Tomasello, 2009).
Second, only little is known about children’s developing expec-
tations of others’ sharing behavior. Our results indicate that chil-
dren of all three age groups expected someone to share less when
sharing was costly. Moreover, our findings show that by 3 years
children showed a general disposition to expect that someone will
share with others. This indicates that at this age children possess an
undifferentiated expectation that humans behave prosocially to-
ward each other. This finding relates to studies showing that
children act prosocially from early on (Brownell et al., 2009;
Thompson et al., 1997; Warneken & Tomasello, 2009) and dis-
tribute resources equally between others (Paulus, Gillis, et al.,
2013; Shaw & Olson, 2012), and it is in line with recent infant
 DEVELOPMENT OF SHARING BEHAVIOR AND SHARING EXPECTATIONS
findings that suggested that even 2-year-olds show a sensitivity for
equal distributions in a looking-time task (e.g., Schmidt & Som-
merville, 2011). It extends theoretical proposals that children have
from early on a prosocial motivation that guides their interactions
with others (e.g., Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998; Warneken & Toma-
sello, 2009) by showing that children also have a corresponding
expectation that others will behave prosocially.
Where does this expectation come from? It is possible that it is
based on an early tendency to trust in the prosocial motivation of
others. If this were true, our results would extend recent findings
on preschool children’s trust in others in epistemic situations (e.g.,
Koenig, Clement, & Harris, 2004; Sobel & Corriveau, 2010) to the
realm of prosocial development. Although further research is
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
needed to substantiate this speculation, it is possible that this
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
expectation forms the basis of a prosocial trust in the goodwill of
other people–a tendency that could help children to seek help when
needed and to facilitate the establishment of relationships.
Moreover, it is possible that 3-year-old children’s expectations
of others’ sharing is the result of their learning about the norms of
the social world. More concretely, research has provided evidence
that young children understand that social behaviors are guided by
conventional norms and expect others to behave according to these
norms (for a review see Rakoczy & Schmidt, 2012). It is possible
that their expectation that others will share is based on such a
normative understanding of sharing behavior, which could be the
result of socialization processes in their day care centers. Even
though further research is necessary to examine this hypothesis
directly, findings that 4-year-old children tend to punish moral
transgressions against third parties (Kenward & Östh, 2012) lend
some support to this interpretation.
In contrast, the 4- and 5-year-old children expected someone to
share more with a friend than with a disliked peer, indicating
specific expectations of how the relationship between an agent and
another person affects the probability of showing prosocial behav-
ior. This shows that the undifferentiated expectation that people
generally share with others becomes differentiated in the course of
the preschool period (see also Hay & Cook, 2007).
Third, the same developmental trend was found for children’s
own sharing and their expectations of other people’s sharing
behavior, suggesting that both show a parallel developmental
progression on a group level. Moreover, at 5 years of age, but not
at 3 or 4 years, sharing behavior and sharing expectations were on
a personal level closely related to each other.
How might we explain the similar developmental patterns found
in the younger preschool children? Children’s own sharing behav-
ior may change for a number of reasons. For example, preschool
children may develop more empathy for friends and less empathy
(or more antipathy) for their disliked peers, leading them to be
more generous to their friends. Alternatively, they might adopt a
strategy of tit-for-tat, expecting that sharing with a friend pays off
in the future (cf. Axelrod, 1984). At the same time, when their own
sharing behavior changes, children may observe similar changes in
their peers’ behavior, noticing that they also start to treat friends
and disliked others differently. This representation of a regularity
of the social world (cf. Nelson & Gruendel, 1981), in turn, forms
the basis of their expectations about others’ future sharing. Ini-
tially, these two processes develop in parallel but appear not to be
related to each other.
919
Then, at 5 years of age, sharing behavior and sharing expecta-
tions become integrated as evident in the strong correlation be-
tween children’s own sharing and their expectations of others’
sharing. This suggests that at 5 years of age an integrated schema
is acquired of how to behave in sharing situations with different
recipients. This schema is then applied to self and other (Barresi &
Moore, 1996), forming the basis of children’s own sharing behav-
ior and their expectations of others’ sharing. This developmental
change might be driven by children’s growing cognitive abilities
(e.g., Perner, 1991) and their growing grip of norms (e.g., Rakoczy
& Schmidt, 2012), which guide a person’s own behavior as well as
a person’s expectations about others’ behavior.
In this respect it is interesting to discuss differences between our
findings and the findings of Olson and Spelke (2008), who em-
ployed a resource-distribution paradigm to examine whether chil-
dren distribute extraneous resources rather to a friend or to another
person. They reported that 3.5-year-olds helped a protagonist to
differentially distribute resources to friends than to strangers, while
in our study, 3-year-old children did not share differently with
friends and disliked peers. Note that in our study children could
share their own resources (or not) between themselves and a
recipient, and children were alternately paired with one of the
recipients. In contrast, in Olson and Spelke’s (2008) study children
had to distribute a predefined number of resources between the two
recipients—sometimes an uneven number, urging the children to
prefer one over the other. That is, Olson and Spelke (2008) showed
that, when urged by situational constraints, children think that
someone rather gives items to a friend than to a stranger. Yet, our
study shows that in situations without situational constraints
3-year-old children share with friends and disliked peers to the
same extent.
The findings are also informative for research on the develop-
ment of concepts of friendship and other relationships (e.g.,
Gifford-Smith & Brownell, 2003; Laursen & Hartup, 2002). They
show that by 5 years of age children have clear expectations of the
behaviors associated with friendship. This indicates that they have
acquired a model of how friends or disliked peers behave toward
each other and thus a differentiated understanding of the various
interpersonal relations of their social world. This knowledge en-
ables them to successfully guide their actions in their social envi-
ronment and might be the basis for their ability to form more
enduring friendship relations in the school-age period (cf. New-
comb & Bagwell, 1995).
Notwithstanding the insights gained by the current results, the
present study has also some limitations and leads to a number of
open research questions. One limitation concerns the use of animal
characters to represent the different social roles involved in the
study. Although several studies have successfully employed ani-
mal characters or toy figures to display agents in developmental
studies (e.g., Fawcett & Markson, 2010; Olson & Spelke, 2008;
Paulus & Moore, 2011), it would be informative to investigate in
greater detail whether the insights derived from these studies also
hold in situations in which children have to interact with real peers.
Additionally, the current findings open avenues for further re-
search. For example, given that social-cognitive skills contribute to
friendship quality (Dunn & Cutting, 1999) and given that friend-
ship quality in sharing tasks accounts for aggressive behavior
(McElwain & Volling, 2005) in preschoolers, future research
could examine whether individual differences in children’s expec-
 920 PAULUS AND MOORE
tations of others’ sharing relates to their friendship quality and
their aggressive behavior.
Taken together, the present study reveals developmental
changes in preschool children’s sharing behavior and their expec-
tations of others’ sharing. It shows that 3-year-old children have a
general expectation that someone will share with others (irrespec-
tive of the relationship between protagonist and recipient) and
show a corresponding inclination to share with others. In contrast,
4- and 5-year-old children have acquired a specific understanding
that someone is more likely to share with a friend than with a
disliked other and also display this recipient-dependency in their
own sharing behavior. At 5 years of age, sharing expectations and
sharing behavior were found to be closely related to each other.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This pattern of developmental changes in preschool children’s
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
prosocial behavior corresponds to the idea that development fol-
lows the orthogenetic principle, that is, an increasing differentia-
tion and hierarchical integration (cf. Werner, 1957).
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Received August 8, 2012
Revision received April 15, 2013
Accepted May 6, 2013 䡲