The Daily Stat from Harvard Business Review

 

December 17, 2014 It Takes Brains to Behave Spitefully Preschoolers with greater cognitive ability have a greater propensity to behave spitefully toward others in a game, taking intentional actions that decrease their partners’ payoffs even at some cost to themselves, say Elisabeth Bügelmayer and C. Katharina Spiess of DIW Berlin in Germany. In an experiment, a 1-standard-deviation increase in a cognitive ability score increased a child's likelihood of behaving spitefully by 8 percentage points. Spiteful behavior requires a certain level of cognitive ability, the researchers point out: The behavior's costs and benefits must be calculated and the consequences taken into account. SOURCE: Spite and cognitive skills in preschoolers

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