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Creating objects can increase our evaluation of them, even when we compare them to physically identical copies (IKEA effect). Here we evaluate the influence of collaboration on the IKEA effect in two societies--the United Kingdom and India. One hundred twenty-eight 5-to-6-year-old children (48% female, 50% British middle class, 50% Indian middle class) assembled toys in pairs. Half of the children collaborated to assemble a single toy and half assembled their own toy. In both societies, children demonstrated an IKEA effect (?2p = .19), valuing their own creation over an identical copy. This was the case regardless of whether children collaborated or worked independently. In summary, it seems that the IKEA effect is a potent bias that is present in diverse societies and is insensitive to others' contributions in a collaborative environment.

Interactions with peers are fundamental to socio‐cognitive development, but assessing peer interactions in standardized experiments is challenging. Therefore, researchers commonly utilize puppetry to simulate peers. This Registered Report investigated urban German children's (AgeRange = 3.5–4.5 years; N = 144; 76♀) mind ascriptions and social cognition to test whether they treat puppets like peers, adults, or neither. Children attributed less mind properties to puppets than peers or adults. However, children's social cognition (i.e., normativity, prosociality, and theory of mind) varied little across partners. Puppetry relies on children's ability for pretense, but can provide valid insights into socio‐cognitive development. Implications for using puppets as stand‐ins for peers in developmental research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ownership is a cornerstone of many human societies and can be understood as a cooperative arrangement, where individuals refrain from taking each other's property. Owners can thus trust others to respect their property even in their absence. We investigated this principle in 5- to 7-year-olds (N = 152) from 4 diverse societies. Children participated in a resource task with a peer-partner, where we established ownership by assigning children to one side or the other of an apparatus and by marking resources with colors to help children keep track of them. When retrieving resources in the partner's presence, the majority of children took their own things and respected what belonged to their partner. A proportion of children in all societies also respected ownership in their partner's absence, although the strength of respect varied considerably across societies. We discuss implications for the development of ownership concepts and possible explanations for societal differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creative labour has an effect on children's and adults' ownership decisions in Western cultures. We investigated whether preschoolers and adults from an Eastern culture ( Japan) would show a similar bias. In a first-party task (Experiment 1), in which participants created their own objects, Japanese preschoolers but not adults assigned ownership to creators. When participants watched videos of third-party conflicts between owners of materials and creators (Experiment 2), Japanese adults, but not preschoolers, transferred ownership to creators. In a British comparison group, both preschoolers and adults showed an effect of creative labour in the third-party task. A bias to attribute ownership on the basis of creative labour is thus not specific to Western culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Merit is a key principle of fairness: rewards should be distributed according to how much someone contributed to a task. Previous research suggests that children have an early ability to take merit into account in third-party situations but that merit-based sharing in first-party contexts does not emerge until school-age. Here we provide evidence that three- and five-year-old children already use merit to share resources with others, even when sharing is costly for the child. In Study 1, a child and a puppet-partner collected coins that were later exchanged for rewards. We varied the work-contribution of both partners by manipulating how many coins each partner collected. Children kept fewer stickers in trials in which they had contributed less than in trials in which they had contributed more than the partner, showing that they took merit into account. Few children, however, gave away more than half of the stickers when the partner had worked more. Study 2 confirmed that children related their own work-contribution to their partner's, rather than simply focusing on their own contribution. Taken together, these studies show that merit-based sharing is apparent in young children; however it remains constrained by a self-serving bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children all over the world learn language, yet the contexts in which they do so vary substantially. This variation needs to be systematically quantified to build robust and generalizable theories of language acquisition. We compared communicative interactions between parents and their 2-year-old children (N = 99 families) during mealtime across five cultural settings (Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Germany, and Japan) and coded the amount of talk and gestures as well as their conversational embedding (interlocutors, function, and themes). We found a comparable pattern of communicative interactions across cultural settings, which were modified in ways that are consistent with local norms and values. These results suggest that children encounter similarly structured communicative environments across diverse cultural contexts and will inform theories of language learning. Public Significance Statement: Cultural norms and beliefs structure social interactions and communication. As a consequence, children learn language under very different circumstances. We studied communicative interactions between parents and their children in five diverse cultural contexts. We found a common, child-centered pattern of communication that was modified in line with local norms and values. This suggests that children can rely on similar information sources and learning processes across cultural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to and control of resources is a major source of costly conflicts. Animals, under some conditions, respect what others control and use (i.e. possession). Humans not only respect possession of resources, they also respect ownership. Ownership can be viewed as a cooperative arrangement, where individuals inhibit their tendency to take others' property on the condition that those others will do the same. We investigated to what degree great apes follow this principle, as compared to human children. We conducted two experiments, in which dyads of individuals could access the same food resources. The main test of respect for ownership was whether individuals would refrain from taking their partner's resources even when the partner could not immediately access and control them. Captive apes (N = 14 dyads) failed to respect their partner's claim on food resources and frequently monopolized the resources when given the opportunity. Human children (N = 14 dyads), tested with a similar apparatus and procedure, respected their partner's claim and made spontaneous verbal references to ownership. Such respect for the property of others highlights the uniquely cooperative nature of human ownership arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Subtle self-construal priming has diverse effects sharing in different societies. • Selfishness increases following independence-priming in both India and the UK. • Only Indian children show greater generosity following interdependence-priming. • Differences in self-construals affects how easily children are moved to generosity. • The findings inform effects of sociocultural transformations around the world. Most humans share to some degree. Yet, from middle childhood, sharing behavior varies substantially across societies. Here, for the first time, we explored the effect of self-construal manipulation on sharing decisions in 7- and 8-year-old children from two distinct societies: urban India and urban United Kingdom. Children participated in one of three conditions that focused attention on independence, interdependence, or a control. Sharing was then assessed across three resource allocation games. A focus on independence resulted in reduced generosity in both societies. However, an intriguing societal difference emerged following a focus on interdependence, where only Indian children from traditional extended families displayed greater generosity in one of the resource allocation games. Thus, a focus on independence can move children from diverse societies toward selfishness with relative ease, but a focus on interdependence is very limited in its effectiveness to promote generosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]