The development of cooperation and morality

Peer Cooperation

Contact: Nils Schuhmacher

During their third year of life, toddlers become increasingly skillful at coordinating their actions with peer partners and they form joint commitments in collaborative situations. However, little effort has been made to explain interindividual differences in collaboration among toddlers. In this line of research we investigate peer collaboration in 2- to 3-year-olds (i.e., level of coordination and preference for joint activity)— together with different factors on multiple conceptual levels that potentially explain the substantial variance in toddlers’ early peer collaboration — namely, distinct individual, dyadic and social variables (i.e., toddlers’ temperament & sociocognitive competencies, spontaneous liking of unfamiliar peer partner & previous positive experiences with peer partner, parental socialization goals).

Overall, the project’s results indicated that various social and individual factors accounted for a significant amount of variance in toddlers’ cooperative activities with peer partners:

  • Mothers’ expectations toward sharing and toddlers’ mastery motivation were predictive for collaboration among peer-dyads.
  • There was a significant moderation effect of toddlers’ desire understanding, that is, there was a positive association between mothers’ socialization goals (i.e., mothers’ emphasis on toddlers’ sharing with peers and agreeableness) and toddlers’ collaboration (i.e., their commitment to joint activity) only when toddlers’ desire reasoning competencies were relatively high.

Based on these findings we underline the importance to further integrate individual and social factors in the scope of a more comprehensive analysis regarding the emergence of human cooperation.


Selected publications:

  • Schuhmacher, N., & Kärtner, J. (2015). Explaining interindividual differences in toddlers’ collaboration with unfamiliar peers: Individual, dyadic, and social factors. Frontiers in Psychology. 6, 1-14.
  • Schuhmacher, N., & Kärtner, J. (2015). Social influences on understanding incompatible desires during toddlers’ third year of life. Social Development, 25(2), 435-452.