Study reveals young children are hypocrites, and they know it
Study reveals young children are hypocrites, and they know it
It’s both a scientific mystery and a parenting conundrum: how do children learn to share?
Children as young as three understand the concept of fairness. Fair means one child should get the same number of stickers as another. But put a young child in charge, and fairness seems to go out the window; young children tend to hoard when they are the ones who are deciding how much of their own candy or toys to hand over.
New research is beginning to untangle the disconnect between knowledge and behavior, with a surprising finding: Young children asked to predict how they will divvy up stickers already anticipate they will tip the scale in their favor. When it comes to sharing, the three- to six-year-old set is—scientifically speaking—a bunch of self-aware hypocrites.
