Intelligence and Prosocial Behavior:Do Smart Children Really Act Nice?

Results of prev ious studies of the relationship between prosocial behav ior and intelligence hav e been inconsistent. This study attempts to distinguish the dif f erences between sev eral prosocial tasks, and explores the way s in which cognitiv e ability inf luences prosocial behav ior. In Study One and Two, we reexamined the relationship between prosocial behav ior and intelligence by employ ing a costly signaling theory with f our games. The results rev ealed that the prosocial lev el of smarter children is higher than that of other children in more complicated tasks but not so in simple tasks. In Study Three, we tested the moderation ef f ect of the av erage intelligence across classes, and the results did not show any group intelligence ef f ect on the relationship between intelligence and prosocial behav ior