Whom to share teacher, joker or stranger

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of humour, teaching, gender, age, birth order, siblings, parents’ level of education and income on kindergarteners’ costly sharing behaviours. The participants consist of 106 kindergarteners enrolled in three public kindergartens in Şanlıurfa. The participants interacted with two assistants, one of whom made them laugh (the joker) and the other taught them something new (the teacher). After the meetings, a third assistant presented 20 stickers to each child. Among the 20 stickers, the children selected their 10 favourite stickers. Another assistant asked the children to share their stickers with teaching, joker or stranger if they desired. The children’s distribution of their stickers to the joker, the teacher assistants and the neutral recipients did not statistically differ. This might be the result of egalitarian tendency of young children. Multiple regression revealed gender as a predictor variable for sharing with jokers and total sharing. The girls shared significantly more than the boys.

KEYWORDS:

• Social behaviour
• prosocial behaviour
• humour
• sharing behaviour

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.