Children can work together to reach a target that benefits a whole group even if it is at a personal cost to themselves, a new study has shown.
Researchers invited groups of six-to-10-year-olds to take part in a game where they were each given containers of water and could decide how much of it to offer into a common pool.
If the group contributed a certain amount of water, it resulted in benefits for the whole group, but children also obtained benefits for any water they kept.
At the same time, the participants were either given feedback about their own outcomes in the game or about everyone's outcomes.
The results showed the majority of groups achieved their objectives and cooperated until the last round of the game, even when children observed the outcomes of others within their groups.
However, those who saw everyone's outcomes were somewhat less likely to keep reaching the threshold as the game progressed and differences in individual outcomes became more noticeable.
Researchers say the findings provide valuable insights into how groups of people can work together to overcome communal challenges and demonstrate the effectiveness of setting clear and unambiguous targets.
The study is published in the journal Psychological Science and involved researchers from the University of Plymouth's School of Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Germany), and the IESE Business School (Spain).
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