Chinese Young Children Engage in Social Role‐Based Sharing Behavior

Role ethics suggests that moral obligations arise from the duties associated with one's social roles. Yet, the influence of social roles on children's moral behavior remains unclear. This research addressed this gap by testing whether assigning social roles increased sharing in 5- to 6-year-old children and whether peer modeling enhanced role-based sharing across two studies in the Chinese population (N = 192; 96 girls). In Study 1, children were either assigned a "duty student" role, a role highly related to duties, or received no role, and then engaged in a sharing task. Before making their sharing decisions, they observed a group of peers-either all duty students or all without roles-engaging in unanimous generous sharing. Results showed that after observing peer modeling, children assigned the duty student role shared significantly more than those without the role. Moreover, children's normative judgments about sharing were influenced by both their own assigned roles and the roles of the peer models, and these judgments were associated with their sharing behavior. Study 2 found that simply assigning the role, without exposure to peer modeling, did not increase children's sharing. Their normative judgments about sharing were also unaffected by their assigned roles and were largely unrelated to their sharing behavior. Taken together, these findings suggest that Chinese young children engage in role-based prosocial behavior from an early age, and that exposure to peer models can potentially enhance role-based morality. SUMMARY: Assigning a duty student role to 5- to 6-year-old children increased their sharing behavior following peer modeling of generous sharing. Children's own roles and models' roles jointly influenced their normative judgments about sharing, which correlated with children's sharing behavior. Without exposure to peer modeling, assigning roles alone did not significantly increase children's sharing. These findings demonstrated that role-based prosocial behavior is present at an early age, with peer modeling potentially facilitating its enactment.