Minimal Group Effects on Children's Deception

Previous research has claimed that the mere assignment of individuals to arbitrary groups - such as those wearing the same T-Shirt colour - is enough to elicit ingroup bias in children, leading them to favor their own group in various social decisions (see Dunham et al., 2018, for a review). Notably, participants have been found to be more willing to engage in deception when it benefits their ingroup, as opposed to the outgroup (e.g., Dunham et al., 2011; Sierksma et al., 2019). However, these findings predominantly stem from WEIRD populations (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic), including countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, and parts of Europe, raising questions about their cross-cultural generalizability. The present study investigates minimal group effects on prosocial deception in a cross-cultural context by comparing children with a core age range from 5 to 10 from Namibia and Germany. These two countries were selected as comparison contexts because they represent distinct cultural models of socialization: Germany emphasizes psychological autonomy, encouraging independence and self-expression, while Namibia – particularly in Bantu communities- emphasizes hierarchical relatedness, promoting obedience and respect for authority (Keller, 2018). Our goal is to examine whether minimal group membership similarly influences children's willingness to deceive for the benefit of others across these diverse cultural settings. Children will be assigned to one of two minimal groups (i.e., yellow or green) and asked to participate in a private die-rolling task across three rounds. In each round, they will have the opportunity to cheat in order to gain resources either for themselves, for a peer from their ingroup, or for a peer from the outgroup. This design allows us to assess how group membership modulates prosocial deception in both cultural contexts.