Children's self-evaluation of their prosociality when comparing themselves with a specific versus abstract other

Abstract

This study examines the development of children's self-assessment of their prosociality in normative social comparisons with an average peer, who was either a concrete individual, or an abstract one, at a school of average socioeconomic level in south Israel (N = 148, Age 6–12 years, 51% females; June 2021). Results show that older children exhibited the better-than-average (BTA) effect by perceiving themselves as more generous than their average peer. Conversely, younger children exhibited a worse-than-average effect, in that they assumed that their peers would act more generously than themselves ((Formula presented.)). Only the older children (aged 8 years onward) were significantly affected by the concreteness of the target of comparison by exhibiting the BTA effect only when the average peer was abstract (not concrete).