How to increase rates of school prosocial behavior is an abiding concern to society and is of considerable interest to educational scholars and stakeholders. In the last decades, research on prosociality in schools focuses on social interactions among children, from the very early stages of development onward. It was found that factors such as peer relations, group affiliation, and social status, may prevent or activate prosocial behavior (Sabato & Kogut, 2021)– with significant implications for school climate, academic success and personal well-being (Schonert-Reichl, 2017). One of the salient findings in this field of research is that higher-status children are perceived by their friends and teachers to be more helpful, cooperative, and kind (van den Berg et al., 2015), and tend to a sharing behavior more than lower-status children (Sabato & Kogut, 2021). However, this link is not straightforward (Warden & MacKinnon, 2003) and contextual variables that determine when social status encourages or hinders prosociality should be examined.

It has been suggested that the effect of social status on prosociality may be dependent on the characteristics of the beneficiary and that children are more prosaically toward their in-group members, known as in-group favoritism (e.g., Sabato & Kogut, 2021). This effect may be even more substantial when the beneficiary is from a stereotyped group (Zimmerman & Levy, 2000). Nevertheless, several contextual factors may attenuate in-group preference. For example, in-group favoritism was found to be significant only among children in the higher social status group (Newheiser et al., 2014; Sabato & Kogut, 2021). In addition, introducing specific out-group stereotypes, increased the incidents of children helping a needy out-group member more than an in-group member, although the children held a negative conception of the out-group member (Sierksma, 2022). These findings, altogether, indicate that social status and the beneficiary’s characteristics have an interaction effect on prosocial behavior.

The current study aims to understand the effect of social status on social orientation toward in-group versus out-group members, and toward stereotyped versus neutral individuals, among children between the ages of ten to eleven, since social status becomes relatively stable from the fourth grade onward (Poulin & Chan, 2010). Although previous studies pointed to the relationship between social status and prosociality, along with the effect of such situational factors, most of them are based on evaluations by peers and teachers of the children’s general tendencies of prosociality or self-report, rather than measure overt behavior. In order to examine overt behavior, we use the Social Mindfulness paradigm (SoMi; Van Doesum et al., 2013) which provides individuals with a choice between a mindful/ cooperative decision and a self-centered decision.

Several studies applied this task among adults and showed that the socially mindful person is also scored high in the HEXACO personality inventory which measures factors related to respect for others and their perspective on the world, and other-oriented intention (i.e., honesty-humility, agreeableness, fairness, sentimentality, forgiveness, flexibility). This finding supports the idea that social mindfulness is rooted in benevolent prosocial motivations (Van Doesum et al., 2013). Only one study, to date, used this task among children and examined judgments of a third party’s behavior in hypothetical scenarios (see Zhao et al., 2021). This study indicated that, by age 6, children understand the task and its meaning, and positively evaluate a character who takes a snack for herself in a way that leaves a choice for others over a character who leaves no choice. The present study will be the first to utilize the SoMi task and examine self-oriented versus other-oriented decision-making among children while considering their social status in the class. 

A power analysis using G-Power (α=.05, power = 0.95) indicated that a sample of 236 participants would allow to detect a small-to-medium effect size (f2=.10). We recruited 300 fourth and fifth-grade children attending schools in Israel. The experiment includes two stages held several weeks apart, to prevent common method bias (Podsakoff et al., 2012). First stage - Social Status Measuring This stage takes part in a classroom setting. The experimenter writes all children’s names with serial numbers on the board. Through a questionnaire, participants indicate regarding each other child whether or not they typically play with him during school breaks, meet him after school, and tell him personal things. Each child is ranked according to the number of reported interactions with him. This measure was used and validated in previous research (see Sabato & Kogut, 2021). Stage Two - The SoMi Task This stage is conducted in individual settings, where trained experimenters interview each child privately. Participants are randomly assigned to one of four conditions, manipulating the beneficiary’s group affiliation (in-group—a child from their class/out-group—a child from another equivalent grade class); and stereotype (stereotyped—a child immigrant /non-stereotyped—no information provided). The experimenter introduces the SoMi as a decision task in a dyadic interaction with another child and gives them details regarding this child according to their condition, as priming to the task. Then, she explains that they choose first from several categories (e.g., cupcakes, hats, pens) one of three objects that they would get to take home, while the other child chooses from the two remaining objects. Six categories randomly appear on a computer screen; per each, two objects are entirely identical, and the third is unique in its color (colors appear randomly). Choosing the object of which there are two, and providing the other child with two options, would be scored as mindful (1). Choosing the unique option would be scored as unmindful (0). The final score is an average of all rounds, scaling between 0 (only unmindful choices) and 1 (only mindful choices). *Editing addition - a pilot study has led us to a methodological issue with the SoMi task, therefore we made adjustments in our study and adopted the Public Goods Game that measures sharing within the group. We measure through the game whether children prefer to keep prices for themselves or share with their class to optimize their class’s benefits.

The present study aims at deepening our understanding of the association between social status and prosocial behavior among children, by proposing the intergroup and stereotype contexts as possible factors in attenuating this association. Through the SoMi task, we examine other-oriented versus self-oriented decision-making, while participants are entirely autonomous to choose for themselves. This study is ongoing, therefore, the final data, including participants’ distribution is unavailable. Our main hypothesis is that higher social status children will tend to other-oriented decision-making, while lower social status children will tend to self-oriented decision-making. Our secondary hypothesis, in line with previous research (Sabato & Kogut, 2021) on sharing behavior, is that higher social-status children will have higher levels of in-group favoritism, relative to lower social-status children. However, the information regarding the stereotype may increase other-oriented decisions toward out-group members among both, the lower and higher social-status children. Since people may help due to non-altruistic motives such as conforming to social norms and reducing one’s own negative arousal, known as empathic distress (Gugenishvili & Colliander, 2022), we also examine the question of the underlying motivation through subsequent questions in an interview setting after the SoMi task. Lower social-status children are expected to be motivated by self-focused considerations (e.g., fear of being excluded, identification with a child who is also in a lower social status), while higher social-status children are expected to be motivated by other-focused considerations (e.g., mutuality, empathy) (Sabato & Kogut, 2021). Future research might use an experimental design that manipulates children’s social status situationally. This can be done through cyberbullying or imaginary tasks (see Nesdale et al., 2009) and examination of social orientation toward different beneficiaries (in-group vs. out-group, and stereotyped vs. neutral). Such manipulation would allow for more causal conclusions regarding the effect of the experience of social exclusion on social orientation.  

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