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Friendship is an important aspect of children's social lives. However, little is known about how it influences children's fairness behavior towards their peers. We tested (N = 183) pairs of children between 7 and 9 years of age from rural communities in India, Peru and Canada that are known to have divergent norms of fairness. Participants were paired with either a close friend or an acquaintance and could accept or reject different allocations of valuable resources. We experimentally compared children's responses to disadvantageous allocations (less for self) and advantageous allocations (more for self). Results showed that across the three societies children were more likely to reject disadvantageous allocations when they were paired with a friend relative to an acquaintance. When they stood to gain a relative advantage, children in Canada and to some extent Peru were more likely to reject advantageous allocations with friends, yet children in India rejected these offers rarely regardless of who they were paired with. These findings suggest that friendship may shape the expression of fairness concerns in young children, though its influence varies across societies. • We explored how friendship influences children's fairness behavior in three diverse cultural groups. • In samples from Peru and Canada, children were averse to having more resources than a friend. • In India, friendship did not affect children's tolerance of having more resources. • Across societies, children were averse to having fewer resources than a peer, especially when the peer was their friend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of culture on cognitive development is well established for school age and older children. But almost nothing is known about how different parenting and socialization practices in different cultures affect infants' and young children's earliest emerging cognitive and social-cognitive skills. In the current monograph, we report a series of eight studies in which we systematically assessed the social-cognitive skills of 1- to 3-year-old children in three diverse cultural settings. One group of children was from a Western, middle-class cultural setting in rural Canada and the other two groups were from traditional, small-scale cultural settings in rural Peru and India. In a first group of studies, we assessed 1-year-old children's most basic social-cognitive skills for understanding the intentions and attention of others: imitation, helping, gaze following, and communicative pointing. Children's performance in these tasks was mostly similar across cultural settings. In a second group of studies, we assessed 1-year-old children's skills in participating in interactive episodes of collaboration and joint attention. Again in these studies the general finding was one of cross-cultural similarity. In a final pair of studies, we assessed 2- to 3-year-old children's skills within two symbolic systems (pretense and pictorial). Here we found that the Canadian children who had much more experience with such symbols showed skills at an earlier age. Our overall conclusion is that young children in all cultural settings get sufficient amounts of the right kinds of social experience to develop their most basic social-cognitive skills for interacting with others and participating in culture at around the same age. In contrast, children's acquisition of more culturally specific skills for use in practices involving artifacts and symbols is more dependent on specific learning experiences. (Contains 12 tables and 29 figures.)

Adult influence on children’s altruistic behavior may differ between cultural communities. We used an experimental approach to assess the influence of adult models on children’s altruistic giving in a city in the United States and rural villages in India. Children between 3 and 8 years of age were tested with their parents in the United States ( n = 163) and India ( n = 154). Parents modeled either a generous or stingy donation; children then performed a similar task in private. Children in both communities were influenced by the stingy model, but only children in India increased their giving after viewing a generous model. The model’s influence also increased with age in India. Results of a questionnaire revealed that parents in both communities believed that children learned sharing behavior from them. We consider these results in light of differences between these societies, including different socialization goals, cultural values, and content biases that may affect altruistic giving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of culture on cognitive development is well established for school age and older children. But almost nothing is known about how different parenting and socialization practices in different cultures affect infants' and young children's earliest emerging cognitive and social-cognitive skills. In the current monograph, we report a series of eight studies in which we systematically assessed the social-cognitive skills of 1- to 3-year-old children in three diverse cultural settings. One group of children was from a Western, middle-class cultural setting in rural Canada and the other two groups were from traditional, small-scale cultural settings in rural Peru and India.In a first group of studies, we assessed 1-year-old children's most basic social-cognitive skills for understanding the intentions and attention of others: imitation, helping, gaze following, and communicative pointing.Children's performance in these tasks was mostly similar across cultural settings. In a second group of studies, we assessed 1-year-old children's skills in participating in interactive episodes of collaboration and joint attention.Again in these studies the general finding was one of cross-cultural similarity. In a final pair of studies, we assessed 2- to 3-year-old children's skills within two symbolic systems (pretense and pictorial). Here we found that the Canadian children who had much more experience with such symbols showed skills at an earlier age.Our overall conclusion is that young children in all cultural settings get sufficient amounts of the right kinds of social experience to develop their most basic social-cognitive skills for interacting with others and participating in culture at around the same age. In contrast, children's acquisition of more culturally specific skills for use in practices involving artifacts and symbols is more dependent on specific learning experiences.