Children's evaluation of public and private generosity and its relation to behavior: Evidence from China

This research examined children's evaluation of public and private prosocial giving and whether such evaluation would predict actual behavior. We tested children between 6 and 12 years old (N = 192) in China, where children are socialized not to call positive attention to themselves. In Study 1, a significant age-related change was found; younger children evaluated public acts of prosocial giving more favorably than private acts, whereas older children showed the opposite pattern. Study 2 not only replicated the findings of Study 1 but also showed that children's evaluation of public versus private giving predicted their actual behavior in communicating about their own prosocial giving. These findings are the first to show that age-related changes in children's understanding of generosity predict reputation management behavior.