Altruism, sharing, and reciprocity in children as related to friendship status.

The friendship status of a recipient was taken into consideration with respect to the sharing patterns of third grade children. Subjects were found to share significantly more candies initially with a friend than a desired friend or nonfriend peer* A variety of psychological phenomenon determined the second sharing after the receipt of a large, small, or equal amount of candy from the previous recipent. Children increased their sharing to a desired friend after friendly overtures from him (her) and retaliated small donations by an established friend with decreased sharing. In still more neutral conditions, the children followed a norm of equality that was introduced into the experimental situation. Subsequent sharing with a needy child was related neither to feeling good nor to feeling guilty. Also subjects did not respond differently in the experimental conditions because of sex. Finally highly popular children followed more reciprocal patterns of sharing than other children, and were more susceptible to modeling influences of their peers