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Interpersonal trust is a key component of cooperation, helping support the complexsocial networks found across societies. Trust typically involves two parties, one who "trusts" by taking on risk through investment in a second party, who can be "trustworthy" and produce mutual benefits. To date, the developmental literature has focused primarily on the trustor, meaning we know little about the ontogeny of trustworthiness. Whereas trusting can be motivated by self-interest, one-shot trustworthiness is more squarely situated in the prosocial domain, involving a direct tradeoff between self-interest and others' interests. However, this raises the question of whether trustworthiness is distinct from generosity. In this preregistered study, we examine the origins of trustworthiness using an intuitive version of the Trust Game, in which a first party invests resources in a second party who can split the gains. We recruited N = 118 5-to-8 year-old American children (M[subscript age]= 6.94, n = 59 girls, 57% White, 88% of parents with bachelor's degree or higher), split between the "Trustworthiness" condition, where another party's investment is instrumental for obtaining greater resources, and the "Generosity" condition, where the other party is a passive recipient. We found that children in the "Trustworthiness" condition shared significantly more resources than those in the "Generosity" condition. Further, children in the "Trustworthiness" condition predicted that the first party expected them to share a greater number of resources. Overall, these results demonstrate that trustworthiness is distinct from generosity in childhood and suggest that children spontaneously grasp and engage in a key aspect of cooperation.

Mechanistic complexity is an important property that affectshow we interact with and learn from artifacts. Previousresearch finds that children successfully detect complexitycontrasts when given information about the functions of simpleand complex objects. However, do children spontaneouslyfavor relevant information about an object’s causalmechanisms and functions when trying to determine anobject’s complexity? In Study 1, 7–9-year-olds and adults, butnot 5–6-year-olds, favored relevant information (e.g., thedifficulty in fixing an object) over irrelevant information (e.g.,the difficulty in spelling an object’s name) for makingdeterminations of mechanistic complexity. Only in Study 2, inwhich the relevance contrasts were extreme, did the youngestage group favor relevant over irrelevant information. Theseresults suggest that the ability to detect which object propertiesimply complexity emerges in the early school years; youngchildren may be misled by features that are not truly diagnosticof mechanistic complexity.

Previous research has found that even young children accurately assign wealth labels (e.g., rich or poor) to real-world wealth symbols, such as pictures of houses. However, it is unclear whether children spontaneously consider individuals' wealth status when predicting how they will behave toward others. In Study 1, children (n = 100, ages 4-5 and 7-8) predicted that residents of "rich" houses would be likelier to share toys than residents of "poor" houses. This effect was driven by children who viewed rich-house residents as owning more toys. Study 2 (n = 50) suggested that such children were not merely associating attractive objects with attractive behaviors. Rather, it seems that they possessed a conceptual understanding of wealth, which they used to make behavioral predictions. The belief that the rich are likely to share may relate to broader wealth-based preferences and may be elicited more frequently in children who spontaneously notice others' wealth status.

Can children exploit knowledge asymmetries to get away with selfishness? This question was addressed by testing 6‐ to 9‐year‐old children (N = 164; 81 girls) from the Northeastern United States in a modified Ultimatum Game. Children were assigned to the roles of proposers (who offered some proportion of an endowment) and responders (who could accept or reject offers). Both players in the Informed condition knew the endowment quantity in each trial. However, in the Uninformed condition, only proposers knew this information. In this condition, many proposers made "strategically selfish" offers that seemed fair based on the responders' incomplete knowledge but were actually highly selfish. These results indicate that even young children possess the ability to deceive others about their selfishness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young children show social preferences for resource-rich individuals, although few studies have explored the causes underlying such preferences. We evaluate the viability of one candidate cause: Children believe that resource wealth relates to behavior, such that they expect the resource rich to be more likely to materially benefit others (including themselves) than the resource poor. In Studies 1 and 2 (ages 4-10), American children from predominantly middle-income families (n = 94) and Indian children from lower income families (n = 30) predicted that the resource rich would be likelier to share with others than the resource poor. In Study 3, American children (n = 66) made similar predictions in an incentivized decision-making task. The possibility that children's expectations regarding giving contribute to prowealth preferences is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]