The study, by the University of Zurich, also found that children witholder siblings were the most selfish, and those with no brothers orsisters are the least selfish.
Scientists asked 229 children between the ages of three and eight tochoose one of two ways of sharing sweets between themselves and ananonymous partner. They could choose to share sweets or just have onefor themselves. The games tested a variety of attitudes, including achild's preference for giving away sweets at no cost to themselves, andfor sharing two sweets rather than keeping both for themselves.
The research, published in Nature, found that three-year-olds would notgive away sweets, even if it made no difference to how many they keptthemselves. But by the age of eight, they were more egalitarian,preferring to split a prize equally rather than keep it all.
Children without brothers or sisters were 28 per cent more likely toshare than those with siblings, and those who were the youngest in thefamily were 17 per cent less willing to share than children who had onlyyounger siblings. Children were also more likely to share if theirpartner was from the same playgroup or school, and this bias increasedwith age.
Ernst Fehr, of the University of Zurich, who led the study, said, 'Itsuggests that being nice to people you know - parochialism - issomething that develops alongside a sense of equality.'
Researchers wanted to find out when the human sense of fairness, whichdoes not seem to exist in animals, starts to develop. Scientists arekeen to understand why humans are concerned with fairness and the partit has played in building human societies.
The research is published in 28 August issue of Nature, Volume 454,Number 7208.
www.nature.com.