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Keeping Current
to give any of their stickers to the
unknown child by placing them in a
box when no one was looking. On
average, the children shared just under
two of their stickers.
Raising Generous Kids
Making sure children know the
difference between right and wrong
may not be enough to ensure they
grow up to be generous adults.
Healthy people, even small children,
experience an immediate emotional
response to seeing good or bad
behavior, but generosity requires a
more complicated thought process.
Researchers recorded children’s
brain activity and found the first link
between implicit moral evaluations
and actual moral behavior, according
to a study in the December 18, 2014
issue of Current Biology.
Their brain activity suggested that the
children’s moral judgments depended
on early and automatic processing
while observing the helping and
harming scenes, as well as a thoughtful
evaluation of those scenes. However, it
was the appraisal of the scenes alone
that predicted whether or not a child
shared his or her stickers.
A child’s ability to distinguish between
right and wrong is just the first step
in becoming a generous person.
“These findings provide an interesting
idea that by encouraging children
to reflect upon the moral behavior
of others, we may be able to foster
generosity,” Decety said.
—Lisa Barbella
A
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“Moral evaluation in preschool
children, similar to adults, is
complex and constructed from both
emotion and cognition,” said Jean
Decety, a professor of psychology
and psychiatry at the University of
Chicago. “However, we found that only
differences in neural markers of the
latter predict actual generosity.”
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Coaching World
Toddlers are notorious for their
unwillingness to share their toys,
but studies have shown that even
infants can perceive inequality and
preschoolers are capable of acting for
the benefit of others.
Global View of Anger
So, how does generosity develop in
small children? Decety and fellow
researcher Jason Cowell monitored the
electric brain activity of children, aged
three to five, while the kids watched
helpful and harmful scenarios and
while they made decisions about how
to treat another, anonymous child.
However, new findings by a crosscultural team of researchers from the
U.S. and Japan suggest that, in some
cultures, anger may be associated with
better health, instead of worse.
The children were given 10 stickers
and told the “rewards were theirs to
keep.” They were told that the next
child