Do Children Cooperate Conditionally? Adapting the Strategy Method for First-Graders
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In: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Vol. 179, 11.2020, p. 638-652.
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Do Children Cooperate Conditionally?
T2 - Adapting the Strategy Method for First-Graders
AU - Hermes, Hennig
AU - Hett, Florian
AU - Mechtel, Mario
AU - Schmidt, Felix
AU - Schunk, Daniel
AU - Wagner, Valetin
PY - 2020/11
Y1 - 2020/11
N2 - We develop a public goods game (PGG) to measure cooperation and conditional cooperation in young children. Our design addresses several obstacles in adapting simultaneous and sequential PGGs to children who are not yet able to read or write, do not possess advanced abilities to calculate payoffs, and only have a very limited attention span. It features the combination of haptic offline explanation, fully standardized audiovisual instructions, computerized choices based on touchscreens, and a suitable incentive scheme. Applying our experimental protocol to 129 German first-graders, we find that already 6-year-olds cooperate conditionally and that the relative frequency of different cooperation types matches the findings for adult subjects. We also find that neither survey items from teachers nor from parents predict unconditional or conditional cooperation behavior; this underlines the value of incentivized experimental protocols for measuring cooperation in children.
AB - We develop a public goods game (PGG) to measure cooperation and conditional cooperation in young children. Our design addresses several obstacles in adapting simultaneous and sequential PGGs to children who are not yet able to read or write, do not possess advanced abilities to calculate payoffs, and only have a very limited attention span. It features the combination of haptic offline explanation, fully standardized audiovisual instructions, computerized choices based on touchscreens, and a suitable incentive scheme. Applying our experimental protocol to 129 German first-graders, we find that already 6-year-olds cooperate conditionally and that the relative frequency of different cooperation types matches the findings for adult subjects. We also find that neither survey items from teachers nor from parents predict unconditional or conditional cooperation behavior; this underlines the value of incentivized experimental protocols for measuring cooperation in children.
KW - Economics
KW - Conditional cooperation
KW - Strategy method
KW - Public goods game
KW - Revealed preferences
KW - Measurement
KW - Children
KW - Ingroup bias
KW - Group Identity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85061080709&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jebo.2018.12.032
DO - 10.1016/j.jebo.2018.12.032
M3 - Journal articles
VL - 179
SP - 638
EP - 652
JO - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
JF - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
SN - 0167-2681
ER -