Social Preferences and Parental Influence in Preschoolers Avner - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Social Preferences and Parental Influence in Preschoolers

Avner Ben-Ner, University of Minnesota John List, University of Chicago Louis Putterman, Brown University Anya Samak, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Motivation

• The transmission of values, cultural norms and

attitudes across generations has been long theorized on as well as empirically documented

• The role of parents, schools and religious and
• ther institutions has been emphasized
• However, little is actually known about specific

channels and mechanisms of transmission or sources of particular values, norms and attitudes, including altruistic preferences

2 Shared, values, role modeling and emulation: Giving by children and parents

Importance

• Values and non-cognitive skills important for

earnings (Heckman; etc.)

• Intergenerational transmission of earning ability

(Becker A Treatise on the Family; Heckman; etc.)

• Altruistic preferences important for society:

philanthropy, work behavior in firms

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Limited literature

• Correlation between children’s and parents’ altruistic

tendencies(Rushton; Alice Rossi, 2001, Developmental Roots

• f Adult Social Responsibility)
• Engaging in charitable behavior when young [presumably

under parental influence] is a strong predictor of adult altruistic behavior (Harvey Rosen, Stephen Sims, 2011, Altruistic Behavior and Habit Formation)

• Talking to children about giving raises the probability that

children give by at least .13. No evidence that parental role-modeling affects children's giving, except among non-African-American girls (Mark Ottoni-Wilhelm et al., 2012, Raising Charitable Children: The Effects of Verbal Socialization and Role-modeling on Children's Giving)

4 Shared, values, role modeling and emulation: Giving by children and parents

Intergenerational transmission of values

How?

• Family: shared environment and genes
• Teaching and role modeling: in families (parents to

children) and other institutions, in broad culture

• Emulation: by children of parents and other adults,

as well as peers

• Time: prolonged process
• Life cycle: effects vary with age

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Our strategy

Design a study that addresses these effects

• Focus on giving in dictator games by parents, other

adults and preschoolers (3-5 year olds)*

• Evaluate effects of
• Family
• Role modeling
• Emulation
• Obviously, can’t say anything about the role of time

and effects over the life cycle

• *Dictator game experiments with young children: Harbaugh et al. (2000),

Bettinger and Slonim (2006), Benenson et al. (2007), Fehr et al. (2008), Houser et al.

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The theoretical questions in the DG context

[family/inheritance effect] Is parents’ and children’s giving correlated? [teaching/role modeling effect] Do parents behave differently when they expect that their giving is shown to their children then when they know that it is not revealed to them? [emulation effect] Do children behave differently in a dictator game in which they are shown what their parents did in a similar situation as compared to a game in which they are not shown what others did?

7 Shared, values, role modeling and emulation: Giving by children and parents

Methods

• A sample of 700 parents (fathers or mothers) of

preschoolers were invited to participate with their children in a study

• Conducted at GECC, not too far from here
• 167 pairs of parent-child showed up
• Most families: low incomes, diverse ethnicities,

majority non-white

8 Shared, values, role modeling and emulation: Giving by children and parents

Design

• Parents completed background surveys several

months before experiment

• Children underwent cognitive and developmental

levels testing several months before experiment

• Parents and shortly later children participated in

dictator game experiments

• Everything was truthful to both parents and

children

9 Shared, values, role modeling and emulation: Giving by children and parents

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11 Shared, values, role modeling and emulation: Giving by children and parents

Hello! We are going to play a few games today!

• Here is a picture of a girl from another
• school. This girl has a lot of toys to play

with at her home. Do you see her toys in the picture? Show me where they are. This girl didn’t get to play the game today.

• On this plate there are some stickers.

[SHOW STICKER PLATE] They are yours now. You are going to decide how many to keep, and how many to send to this girl.

• You can keep as many of your stickers

as you want, and you can send none, some, or all of your stickers to her. It is up to you how many you keep and how many you send.

12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsj1N0rlsG8&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Shared, values, role modeling and emulation: Giving by children and parents

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No statistically significant order effects. We are using only giving to ‘poor’ data Summary Statistics for Children’s Giving Summary Statistics for Adults’ Giving

Empirical strategy

Possible heterogeneity in the emulation behavior of children and role modeling by adults.

• Heterogeneity may be associated with child “type,” which is

unobservable and age (and other demographics), which is

• bservable and can be controlled for in analysis

Emulation

• Different types of children emulate adults to different degrees or

even direction (contrarians), which cannot be detected by fixed effects (giving in the No Influence condition and in the Influence condition)

• We define child type by Yni (Selfish<3, Fair=3, Generous>3) and

interact it with parent giving in Show to evaluate its effect on emulation

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Empirical strategy contd.

Role modeling

• Parents may give differently, depending on their child’s type
• (1) the teaching or role modeling may vary with child type, and
• (2) parents may want to show behavior that depends on what

different types of children expect of them.

• The two effects cannot be disentangled, but their effect can be

estimated by interacting child type with the amount that a parent gives in the Show condition.

• A null estimated effect may indicate either that parents don’t

take child type into consideration or they don’t know it

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Empirical strategy contd.

Estimation method

• With an endowment of 6 units, the optimal choice of some

children and adults may reflect a corner solution (wanting to give less than 0 – take money away – or give more than 6).

• A related issue arises from the fact that giving was possible in

increments of one unit.

• We use latent variable models – ordered probit – to deal with

both issues.

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Notation

• Xns: Adult giving in the No Show

condition

• Xs: Adult giving in the Show

condition

• Yni: Child giving in the No

Influence condition

• Yi: Child giving in the Influence

conditions

• x* = latent variable for Xns and Xs
• y* = latent variable for Yni and Yi
• Dshow = dummy variable, =1 for

Show condition = 0 for No Show

• R = round 3 of child experiment,

dummy for Influence – No Influence condition

• Child type
• Selfish: Yni = 0, 1 or 2
• Fair: Yni = 3
• Generous: Yni = 4, 5 or 6
• Di = vector of dummies for: child

type, gender, age and ethnicity

• di = individual dummy variables

(child or adult, depends on the context)

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Three analyses

[family/inheritance effect] Yni~Xns [teaching/role modeling effect] Xs~Xns (adult FE, child type, parent gender v. child gender, demographics) [emulation effect] Yi~(Xs-Yni) (child FE, child type, parent gender v. child gender, demographics)

18 Shared, values, role modeling and emulation: Giving by children and parents

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Shared, values, role modeling and emulation: Giving by children and parents 20

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Shared, values, role modeling and emulation: Giving by children and parents 22 Previous table continued – upper part of table omitted – very similar on estimates shown above

Findings

• [family/inheritance] No correlation between Yni

and Xns. No family effect

• [teaching/role modeling] Parents of Generous

children give more in the Show condition than parents of Fair and Selfish children (controlling for the parents’ own type, Xns).

• The effect is somewhat stronger for fathers v. mothers

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Findings contd’

• [emulation] Yes, varying with child type, age

and gender

• The greater the difference Xs-Yni the likelier it is that

the child will increase giving: Generous=Selfish>Fair

• Younger children respond more strongly to the

difference

• Girls respond more strongly than boys
• Father and other adult have stronger influence than

mother

• No ethnic differences
• Robustness. In the estimation we did not use information from

children’s round 3 for the control group, who were not influenced by an adult. When we include them in analyses, we

• btain nearly identical results

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Conclusions

• No family effect
• Teaching effect, heterogeneity
• Emulation effect, heterogeneity
• Girls, younger children more susceptible to influence
• Father and other adult have more influence than

mother

• Selfish and Generous emulate more than Fair

25 Shared, values, role modeling and emulation: Giving by children and parents