Affiliation:
1. Ben‐Gurion University Beer‐Sheva Israel
Abstract
AbstractThis study examines the development of children's self‐assessment of their prosociality in normative social comparisons with an average peer, who was either a concrete individual, or an abstract one, at a school of average socioeconomic level in south Israel (N = 148, Age 6–12 years, 51% females; June 2021). Results show that older children exhibited the better‐than‐average (BTA) effect by perceiving themselves as more generous than their average peer. Conversely, younger children exhibited a worse‐than‐average effect, in that they assumed that their peers would act more generously than themselves (). Only the older children (aged 8 years onward) were significantly affected by the concreteness of the target of comparison by exhibiting the BTA effect only when the average peer was abstract (not concrete).
Funder
Israel Science Foundation
Subject
Developmental and Educational Psychology,Education,Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health