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Kids may be hardwired to‘share and share alike’ PARIS — Humans are selfish in earliest childhood but by the age of seven or eight are keen to share equally, a developmental change so sudden that it can only be explained, at least in part, by genes, according to a study released yesterday. Behavioural scientists and sociologists have quarrelled for decades as to whether generosity and selfishness are inherited or result from social conditioning. But new experiments with 229 Swiss children between the ages of three and eight suggest that Homo sapiens is probably somewhere in between: humans look out for No 1, but also express, if not outright generosity, at least an aversion to inequality. The study, published in the British journal Nature, could help explain how humans developed the ability to co-operate in large groups of individuals who are unrelated, the researchers say. The children were asked to take part in three different games. In each game, the child was confronted with two options as to how to distribute portions of jelly beans and other small sweets. He or she was faced with another kid, shown only in a photo to avoid complications arising from face-to-face encounters. One of the options was the same in all three games: divide the sweets equally. In the first game, the child had the alternate option of keeping a single portion of sweets for himself and giving nothing for the other child. In the second, more sweets were added, and the child had the option of giving the other child two portions and keeping one. And in the third game, the child had the choice of taking two portions and leaving the other child empty-handed. Lead researcher Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich said the three- and four-year-olds were consistently motivated by self-interest, with almost no regard for the well-being of the other. The next age bracket was almost as selfish. “But if we look at the seven-to-eight-year-olds, a different picture emerges,” Fehr said. — AFP