Pathways to prosocial sharing in early childhood

Sharing is one of the earliest-developing forms of prosocial behavior, yet little is known about individual factors that play a role in its emergence in young children. This longitudinal study investigated the role of individual differences in empathy, fairness understanding, and previous sharing behaviors in subsequent sharing behaviours between the first and third years of life. Participants were drawn from a larger study on early moral cognition (target N = 500). Empathic responses (at 10 months), equality expectations (at 13 months), equity expectations (at 21 months), spontaneous and prompted sharing at 18 and 30 months, and sharing of both earned and windfall stickers at 40 months were assessed using widely employed age-appropriate tasks. Our results indicated that only early equality expectations at 13 months predicted later sharing behaviour at 18 months. For sharing behaviours beyond 18 months, we found associations only with earlier sharing behaviours, and not with any specific morally relevant capacity. Together, these findings provide preliminary evidence of the stability of sharing behaviour across time and highlight the complexity of the role of individual differences in sharing.