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| Children were monitored with EEGs while watching animated characters perform prosocial and antisocial behaviors, and later participated in a task measuring generosity. |
University of Chicago developmental neuroscientists have found specific
brain markers that predict generosity in children. Those neural markers
appear to be linked to both social and moral evaluation processes.
There are many sorts of prosocial behaviors. Although young children
are natural helpers, their perspective on sharing resources tends to be
selfish. Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor of Psychology and
Psychiatry, and Jason Cowell, a postdoctoral scholar in Decety's Child
NeuroSuite lab, wanted to find out how young children's brains evaluate
whether to share something with others out of generosity. In this study,
generosity was used as a proxy for moral behavior. The paper is
published online by Current Biology and will appear in the Jan. 5, 2015 issue.
"We know that generosity in children increases as they get older,"
said Decety. He added that neuroscientists have not yet examined the
mechanisms that guide the increase in generosity. "The results of this
study demonstrate that children exhibit both distinct early automatic
and later more controlled patterns of neural responses when viewing
scenarios showing helping and harmful behaviors. It's that later more
controlled neural response that is predictive of generosity."
The study included recording brain waves by EEG and eye tracking of
57 children, ages three to five, while they viewed short animations
depicting prosocial and antisocial behaviors of cartoon-like characters
helping or hurting each other. Following that testing, the children
played a modified version of a scenario called the "dictator game." The
children were given ten stickers and were told that the stickers were
theirs to keep. They were then asked if they wanted to share any of
their stickers with an anonymous child who was to come to the lab later
that day.
The children had two boxes, one for themselves and one for the
anonymous child. In an effort to prevent bias, the experimenter turned
around while the child decided whether or how much to share. On average,
the children shared fewer than two stickers (1.78 out of 10) with the
anonymous child. There was no significant difference in sharing behavior
by gender or age. The authors also found that the nature of the
animations the children watched at the outset could influence the
children's likelihood of behaving in a generous way.
The study shows how young children's brains process moral situations
presented in these scenarios and the direct link to actual prosocial
behavior in the act of generosity by sharing the stickers. "The results
shed light on the theory of moral development by documenting the
respective contribution of automatic and cognitive neural processes
underpinning moral behavior in children," Decety concluded in the paper.
The developmental scientists found evidence from the EEG that the
children exhibited early automatic responses to morally laden stimuli
(the scenarios) and then reappraised the same stimuli in a more
controlled manner, building to produce implicit moral evaluations.
"This is the first neuro-developmental study of moral sensitivity
that directly links implicit moral evaluations and actual moral
behavior, and identifies the specific neuro markers of each," said
Decety. "These findings provide an interesting idea that by encouraging
children to reflect upon the moral behavior of others, we may be able to
foster sharing and generosity in them." Decety added that these
findings show that, contrary to several predominant theories of
morality, while gut reactions to the behavior of others do exist, they
are not associated with one's own moral behavior, as in how generous the
children were with their stickers.
Decety and Cowell are now conducting similar work with even younger
children, ages 12 to 24 months, to look at when these neural markers for
generosity emerge.
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