Reputation serves as an important mechanism for maintaining cooperative behavior among individuals. Individuals choose or are chosen to be cooperative partners by creating a reputation to others and for him/herself to increase the benefits of the cooperative partners. The purpose of this study is to explore the formation of children's reputation to others and the characteristics of their self-reputation management. Study 1 examined whether children aged 4-6 could develop prosocial behavior of various types and positive behavioral reputation of different categories, as well as characteristics of their reputation development. The study is divided into two tests which targets children aged 4-6 (N = 242) would choose---- two targets of helping and sharing (Test 1), and two targets of helping/sharing and rule observation (Test 2), when he or she needs help or sharing from others. In Test 1, we found that children of 4-6 years old would prefer to choose the target of helping when they are in need of help, instead of the target of sharing, which indicates that children aged 4-6 can generate a reputation for helping others according to the helping behavior of others. However, children can choose to share, rather than to help, when they need the sharing of others until the age of 6, indicating that there is a developmental process regarding the sharing reputation among others according to others' sharing behavior. While in Test 2, we found that children aged 4, 5 and 6 did not show any preferences in choosing to share (or help) or observe rules when they are in need of help (or sharing), indicating children of 4-6 years old cannot produce reputation of different categories based on the positive behavior of other people in terms of moral realm and social custom. Study 2 examined the management of pro-social reputation of various types for 5-year-old children (N = 120). Diverse types of reputational operations on children were carried out (offer to help vs. share vs. no reputation baseline), with a view to examining the subjects' performance of helping and sharing behavior under different reputational conditions. The results show that children who are exposed to the reputational condition of helping tend to act more quickly to help others compared with children under sharing reputation and no reputational control conditions, while children under the reputational condition of sharing tend to share more compared with those exposed to helping and no reputational control conditions. All of the above results demonstrate that a 5-year-old child can effectively manage a particular reputation and maintain a specific reputation by making behaviors consistent with that reputation. This study shows that on the one hand, children show different developmental patterns for the formation of pro-social reputations of various kinds, and their reputation of helping tends to form earlier than the formation of sharing. However, children can not distinguish the positive behavioral reputations of different categories until the age of 6. On the other hand, children of 5 years old can accurately manage their helping and sharing reputation, and maintain their corresponding reputation by helping and sharing with others. In conclusion, children's perception of reputation is reflected in their specific types of behavior, and the development of self-reputation management comes somewhat earlier than the perception of others' reputation, meaning that children are more sensitive to self-reputation. It is suggested that in the early social interactions, it is more fundamental and important for children to be chosen by others as a cooperative partner than to choose others as their own cooperative partners.
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