ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cognition
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1676175
This article is part of the Research TopicCognitive Mechanisms Underpinning Pro-Social Behavior Across CulturesView all 12 articles
Do Chinese Preschoolers follow Adults' Suggestions? The Impact of Suggestion fairness and Advisor familiarity on Preschoolers' Sharing Behavior
Provisionally accepted
- Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China
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While preschoolers' sharing behavior is an important indicator of social development, it remains unclear how adult suggestions influence their sharing decisions. This study investigated how suggestion fairnesss (fair/unfair) and advisor familiarity (familiar/unfamiliar) affect preschoolers' sharing behavior and its relationship with emotional experiences. Two experiments were conducted with 187 preschoolers aged 3-6 years (Experiment 1: n = 124, M = 4.54 years, SD = 1.02; Experiment 2: n = 63, M = 5.50 years, SD = 0.28) using a dictator game paradigm. Results revealed that despite having a more mature understanding of fairness, 5-6-year-olds were more susceptible to adult suggestions compared to 3-4-year-olds. Older preschoolers were more likely to follow suggestions from familiar advisors while showing less compliance with unfamiliar advisors' suggestions. Additionally, 5-6-year-olds demonstrated greater consistency between fairness judgments and actual sharing behavior, whereas 3-4-year-olds showed a larger cognition-behavior gap. Notably, children who shared more than they deemed fair ("over-sharing") reported experiencing more positive emotions. These findings suggest that both suggestion fairness and advisor familiarity significantly influence preschoolers' sharing decisions, with age-specific patterns in suggestion compliance and emotional experiences.
Keywords: preschoolers, Sharing behavior, Suggestion Fairness, advisor familiarity, emotional experience
Received: 30 Jul 2025; Accepted: 08 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chen, Zha, He, Zhou and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Wenjie Zhang, zwjpreschool@hunnu.edu.cn
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