No one is going to recess: How children evaluate collective and targeted punishment.

This study examined children's responses to targeted and collective punishment. Thirty-six 4-5-year-olds and 36 6-7-year-olds (36 females; 54 White; data collected 2018-2019 in the United States) experienced three classroom punishment situations: Targeted (only transgressing student punished), Collective (one student transgressed, all students punished), and Baseline (all students transgressed, all punished). The older children evaluated collective punishment as less fair than targeted, whereas younger children evaluated both similarly.

Beyond accidents: Young children's forgiveness of third-party intentional transgressors.

To maintain our cooperative relationships, it is critical that we repair these relationships when they are damaged by transgressions. Key to this repair is forgiveness. Previous research suggests that adults and children are more forgiving of remorseful transgressors than of unremorseful ones after accidental transgressions.

Recipient identifiability increases prosocial behavior in young children.

Research in adults has established that identifying an individual (e.g., by name or a photograph) increases adults' prosocial behavior toward that individual.

Young children do not perceive distributional fairness as a moral norm.

Young children robustly distinguish between moral norms and conventional norms (Smetana, 1984; Yucel et al., 2020). In existing research, norms about the fair distribution of resources are by definition considered part of the moral domain; they are not distinguished from other moral norms such as those involving physical harm.

Fairness takes time: Development of cooperative decision making in fairness context.

The current study examined the development of fairness behavior and tested whether children's fair choices are fast and intuitive or slow and deliberate. Reaction times were measured while 4- to 9-year-olds (N = 94, 49 girls, 84.6% White) completed a novel social decision-making task contrasting fair choices with selfish choices.

Young children value recipients who display gratitude.

Gratitude is a positive social emotion that one experiences when one has benefited from another person's goodwill (McCullough, 2002). Feeling gratitude urges the grateful person to reciprocate and respond prosocially, thereby solidifying cooperation. Yet little prior research has focused on the social functions of displaying gratitude, namely to convey that a grateful recipient is likely to be a reliable and trustworthy cooperative partner.

Preferential forgiveness: The impact of group membership and remorse on preschoolers' forgiveness.

Forgiveness helps repair ruptured relationships and maintain cooperation. It may most usefully serve these functions when it is preferentially directed toward better cooperators. We examined this proposal in two studies with young children.

Eliciting forgiveness.

When we commit transgressions, we need to be forgiven to restore our friendships and social standing. Two main ways we can elicit forgiveness is through asking for forgiveness after committing a transgression (i.e.

Chimpanzees' (Pan troglodytes) internal arousal remains elevated if they cannot themselves help a conspecific.

Chimpanzees help conspecifics achieve their goals in instrumental situations, but neither their immediate motivation nor the evolutionary basis of their motivation is clear. In the current study, we gave chimpanzees the opportunity to instrumentally help a conspecific to obtain food. Following recent studies with human children, we measured their pupil diameter at various points in the process.

Young Children and Adults Show Differential Arousal to Moral and Conventional Transgressions.

From a young age, children understand and enforce moral norms, which are aimed at preserving the rights and welfare of others. Children also distinguish moral norms from other types of norms such as conventional norms, which serve to ensure coordination within social groups or institutions. However, far less is known about the mechanisms driving this differentiation.

The role of affect in feelings of obligation.

Tomasello offers a compelling account of the emergence of humans' sense of obligation. We suggest that more needs to be said about the role of affect in the creation of obligations. We also argue that positive emotions such as gratitude evolved to encourage individuals to fulfill cooperative obligations without the negative quality that Tomasello proposes is inherent in obligations.

Paying it forward: The development and underlying mechanisms of upstream reciprocity.

Two studies investigated the development and motivations underlying children's upstream reciprocity. In Study 1, 3- and 4-year-olds (n = 40 per age group) received or did not receive help while playing a game. Subsequently, children could share stickers with a new child.

Helping, fast and slow: Exploring intuitive cooperation in early ontogeny.

Cooperative behavior is central to human societies. Human adults who reach their cooperative decisions more rapidly and independently of cognitive control display greater levels of prosocial behavior. This is taken to show that cooperation is guided by intuitive processes rather than by active control of selfish impulses.

Something old, something new: Leveraging what we know to optimize new directions in emotion development research.

The 3 papers by Hammond and Drummond (2019), LoBue and Adolph (2019), and Stern, Botdorf, Cassidy, and Riggins (2019) bring into focus some of the exciting and promising new directions emerging in the field of emotional development. This commentary urges researchers moving in these new directions to leverage what is already known about emotional development to inform future predictions and interpretations, as well as to remain mindful of the thorny but essential questions surrounding the conceptualization, measurement, and interpretation of emotions. These points are illustrated with a focus on 2 specific topics.

Toddlers' intrinsic motivation to return help to their benefactor.

A natural reaction to receiving help from someone is to help that person in return. In two studies, we investigated the developmental origins of children's motivation to return help. In Study 1, 18- and 24-month-old toddlers were either helped or not helped by an adult, and they could subsequently provide that adult with help or else observe another person providing help.

The benefits of forgiving: Young children respond positively to those who forgive.

Forgiveness helps to repair relationships and thus helps maintain cooperation. Might forgiveness also convey to others that the forgiver is a valuable cooperation partner? We propose that if victims' forgiveness displays have evolved as important social cues that help uphold cooperation, then even young children might respond positively to forgiveness displays. In a preregistered study, 4- and 5-year-olds (n = 20 per age group) watched videos of transgressions in which the victim either forgave or did not forgive the transgressor.

Eyes, More Than Other Facial Features, Enhance Real-World Donation Behavior.

Humans often behave more prosocially when being observed in person and even in response to subtle eye cues, purportedly to manage their reputation. Previous research on this phenomenon has employed the "watching eyes paradigm," in which adults displayed greater prosocial behavior in the presence of images of eyes versus inanimate objects. However, the robustness of the effect of eyes on prosocial behavior has recently been called into question.

Early Reputation Management: Three-Year-Old Children Are More Generous Following Exposure to Eyes.

To enhance their reputations, adults and even 5-year-old children behave more prosocially when being observed by others. However, it remains unknown whether children younger than five also manage their reputations. One established paradigm for assessing reputation management is the 'watching eyes paradigm,' in which adults have been found to be more prosocial in the presence of eyes versus control images.

Desire understanding in 2-year-old children: An eye-tracking study.

'Much research has investigated children's understanding of others' mental states in terms of beliefs, but far less is known about their understanding of others' desires. To fill this gap, we used an eye-tracking paradigm to test 2-year-old children's desire understanding by measuring their anticipatory looking behavior as well as changes in their internal arousal (i.e.

The Emergence of Forgiveness in Young Children.

Humans depend greatly on our cooperative relationships. Thus, when our relationships are damaged by transgressions, they need to be repaired. Such repair requires that the transgressor show remorse and the victim forgive.

The specificity of reciprocity: Young children reciprocate more generously to those who intentionally benefit them.

Young children engage in direct reciprocity, but the mechanisms underlying such reciprocity remain unclear. In particular, prior work leaves unclear whether children's reciprocity is simply a response to receiving benefits (regardless of whether the benefits were intended) or driven by a mechanism of rewarding or preferring all benefactors (regardless of whom they benefited). Alternatively, perhaps children engage in genuine reciprocity such that they are particularly prosocial toward benefactors who intentionally provided them with benefits.

The relation between young children's physiological arousal and their motivation to help others.

Children are motivated to help others from an early age. However, little is known about the internal biological mechanisms underlying their motivation to help. Here, we compiled data from five separate studies in which children, ranging in age from 18 months to 5.