Preschoolers’ allocations in the dictator game: The role of moral emotions

Economic research has proposed that emotions like anger, guilt, and other moral emotions might be important causes of strong reciprocity, the willingness to sacrifice own resources for others. This study explores how 3–5-year-old children allocate resources in the dictator game, and whether participants’ understanding of moral emotions predicted allocations. Participants judged moral rule violations, attributed emotions to hypothetical violators and to the self as violator, and judged the character of the violator. Attribution of negative (guilt) feelings to the self after a violation and character evaluation of the violator as well as age and gender significantly predicted allocations in the dictator game. The implications of these results are discussed for economic research on altruism and strong reciprocity and psychological research on the development of moral emotions.