Encouraging Young Children to Share: A Future-Thinking Strategy for Promoting Generosity

Sharing is a crucial social skill that plays a key role in helping children build positive relationships and develop emotional intelligence. However, for many young children, the act of sharing—especially with peers from different racial backgrounds—can be difficult. While we know that developing sharing skills early on can set children up for success, effective strategies to promote sharing are not always easy to find. In a recent study, we explored a promising approach: encouraging young children to imagine the positive feelings they would experience if they shared with others. This “future thinking” technique, which has been shown to boost self-control and decision-making in other contexts, could help young children practice self-regulation, allowing them to share more freely with both in-group and out-group peers. 

We invited 87 preschool-aged children from the Twin Cities to participate in a marble run game. The task was simple: children were given five marbles to play in the game and asked how many they would like to share with two peers who would come to the lab later—one White and one Black. The majority of the participants were White children. They were randomly assigned to interact with one of three storyboards before the game: 1) positive future thinking (imagining how good it would feel to share marbles), 2) negative future thinking (imagining how bad it would feel not to share marbles), or 3) a control (imagining bedtime routine, with no focus on future outcome or emotion).

We also considered individual differences that might influence sharing behavior, such as the child’s ability to understand their own and others’ thoughts (called “theory of mind”) and their executive function skills. 

The results revealed several interesting findings. First, there was an in-group bias: as expected, children shared more marbles with the White peer than the Black peer. This finding aligns with past research showing that children tend to favor peers who share their own racial background. Second, children’s understanding of their own thoughts was the strongest predictor of whether they would share marbles, followed by their executive function skills. We also found that the positive future thinking group (who imagined the positive feelings associated with sharing) had the most children who shared marbles with both the White and Black peers, compared to the other groups. Finally, we demonstrated that working memory matters: for children with stronger working memory skills (those who scored above the 60th percentile), the positive simulation had a statistically significant effect on the number of marbles they shared.

This study demonstrated that encouraging young children to imagine the positive emotions they will feel from sharing can help them act on their desire to be generous. By guiding children to visualize how good it feels to help others, we can promote prosocial behaviors such as sharing. What’s particularly interesting is that this strategy seems to be most effective for children with stronger working memory skills, as these children were better able to remember their plans to share. Even more promising, the positive future thinking approach helped children share with peers of different races, reducing natural biases that can emerge in early childhood.