Millard C. Madsen

Developmental and Cross-Cultural Differences in the Cooperative and Competitive Behavior of Young Children:

A two-person experimental task was developed for use in the study of age and cultural differences in the cooperative-competitive behavior of children in a small Mexican town and in California. The results indicate a higher level of cooperation among Mexican than among Anglo-American children and an increase in nonadaptive competition with age among the Anglo-American children.

Cooperative and Competitive Motivation of Children in Three Mexican Sub-Cultures

Large samples of children in southern Mexico representative of the urban middle class, urban poor, and a rural Indian village participated in four experiments. These were designed to assess cooperative and competitive motivation under the following conditions: (1) simple altruism, (2) work output, (3) solution of a problem in which competition minimized individual reward, and (4) solution of a problem in which competition maximized individual reward. Significant differences between groups were obtained in Exps. III and IV with the urban middle-class children proving to be much more competitive than their urban poor and rural counterparts.

Cooperative and Competitive Behavior Experiments Related to Ethnic Identity and Urbanization in Papua New Guinea

The cooperative-competitive behavior of children in Papua New Guinea was assessed by two experimental techniques that have previously been used within other countries to demonstrate ethnic differences. The results of Experiments 1 and 2, in which the Madsen cooperation board was used, indicate significantly more cooperation between children of an intact tribe than between children in a heterogeneous urban setting. In Experiment 3, the marble-pull apparatus was used to assess the cooperative interaction of children from ten sites which varied in tribal intactness, degree of western contact, and urbanization. The results demonstrate the significance of primary group identification as a determinant of cooperative behavior.

Mother-Directed Achievement of Children in Two Cultures:

Mother-child pairs in a small Mexican town and in Los Angeles, California, were observed in two experimental situations in which the mother either controlled the rewards given to the child for success or failure or selected achievement goals for the child. The results of the first experiment were that mothers of both groups rewarded their children for success, but that Mexican mothers gave significantly more rewards for failure than did the Los Angeles mothers. The results of the second experiment were that the Los Angeles mothers chose significantly more difficult achievement goals for their children and did not lower the goal following failure, as did the Mexican mothers.

Cooperation and Challenge in Four Cultures

Summary The cooperative and competitive behavior of children from four cultures was compared in an experimental situation in which the complexity and risk involved in the cooperative solution was varied. Ss were 56 boys and girls aged seven to nine from each of four cultural settings: United States, West Germany, Israel kibbutz, and Israel city. Israeli kibbutz children were significantly less competitive than each of the other three groups. Kibbutz and German children cooperated significantly more often than did American and Israeli city children when the cooperative solution was complex as opposed to simple.

Cooperation and Competition of Urban and Rural Children in the Republic of South Korea

Abstract The cooperative and competitive behavior of 8–9 year old children in urban and rural Korea was assessed by three different experimental techniques. The urban children were significantly more competitive and less cooperative in experiments 1 and 2, experiments in which the competitive alternative involved direct overt conflict. Both groups were highly competitive in experiment 3 in which the competitive alternative was less overt.

Animism and Related Tendencies in Hopi Children: A Replication of Dennis

The work of Wayne Dennis on animism in Hopi Indian children is replicated after 40 years. The results indicate that while little change has taken place in the Hopi childs attribution of life to inanimate objects, there is a substantial decrease in the attribution of consciousness to these same objects. An additional result is that the moral realism of the present day Hopi children has decreased markedly as compared with the original study.