Semantic priming influences the perceived motivation underlying spontaneous and requested prosocial behavior in 9–11-year-old German children

This study aimed to develop a novel semantic sense-of-agency priming and test whether it influences 9- to 11-year-old German children’s sensitivity to prosocial obligations. In an unmoderated online study, children were assigned to either an individual agency ( n = 62) or relational agency ( n = 60) priming condition. Then, they saw four vignettes describing helping and sharing either spontaneously or following a request and judged how desirable and satisfying these prosocial acts would be. Contrary to our hypotheses, relational agency priming did not decrease children’s sensitivity to prosocial obligations. Across both conditions, children rated requested helping as less desirable and satisfying than spontaneous helping. Also, children in the relational agency condition reported more desire and satisfaction with helping than children in the individual agency condition. We discuss possible unintended effects of the priming method, namely an other-regard priming, and the importance of measuring and validating explanatory constructs of cross-cultural variability.