Getting kids to share their toys is a never-ending battle, and forcing them to do so never seems to help. New research suggests that allowing children to make a choice to sacrifice their own toys in order to share with someone else makes them share more in the future. The new findings are published in Psychological Science.
These experiments were conducted by psychological scientists, Nadia Chernyak and Tamar Kushnir of Cornell University. They found that sharing things with others when they are given a difficult choice leads children to think of themselves as people who like to share. It also makes them more likely to act in a pro-social （亲社会的）manner in the future.
Previous research has explained why rewarding children for sharing can backfire. Children e to think of themselves as people who don't like to share since they had to be rewarded for doing so. Because they don't view themselves as sharers, they are less likely to share in the future.
Chernyak and Kushnir were interested in finding out whether freely chosen sacrifice might have the opposite effect on kids' willingness to share. To test this, the researchers introduced five-year-old children to Doggie, a sad puppet. Some of the children were given a difficult choice: Share a precious sticker（贴纸） with Doggie, or keep it for themselves. Other children were given an easy choice between sharing and putting the sticker away, while children in a third group were required by the researcher to share.
Later on, all the children were introduced to Ellie, another sad puppet. They were given the option of how many stickers to share (up to three). The kids who earlier made the difficult choice to help Doggie shared more stickers with Ellie. The children who were initially faced with an easy choice or who were required to give their sticker to Doggie, on the other hand, shared fewer stickers with Ellie. Therefore, children did not benefit from simply giving something up, but rather from willingly choosing to give something up of value.
“You might imagine that making difficult, costly choices is demanding for young children or even that once children share, they don’t feel the need to do so again,” Chernyak says. “But this wasn't the case: once children made a difficult decision to give up something for someone else, they were more generous, not less, later on.” Chernyak concludes.
【小题1】 helps children to share more in the future.A．Rewarding children for sharing B．Forcing children to share C．Allowing children to share precious things willinglyD．Allowing children to share what they don’t need【小题2】The underlined word “backfire” means .A．have an opposite effectB．serve as a pushC．cause angerD．avoid taking things back【小题3】Those who were required to share give fewer stickers to Ellie because .A．they regret what they didB．it’s not their own choiceC．Ellie is not as sad as DoggieD．they like to share with a real person【小题4】We can conclude from the passage that .A．parents will never find a way to get children to share toysB．a gift should be given to make up for children’s sacrificeC．children pretend to be generous when they are being observedD．making difficult choices may influence sharing behaviorC
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(答案→)C
解析：文章介绍了儿童分享事物的心理科学。有研究表明孩子做出艰难选择会对他们的分享行为有影响，他们可能会变的慷概。
【小题1】推理题：根据文章第一段中“New research suggests that allowing children to make a choice to sacrifice their own toys in order to share with someone else makes them share more in the future. ”新研究表明,让孩子选择牺牲自己的玩具与别人分享可让他们在未来分享更多东西。由此可知培养孩子分享意愿对孩子将来分享更多东西是有帮助的。故选C。
【小题2】推理题：backfire是“产生出乎意料及事与愿违的结果”的意思。A.have an opposite effect有反作用；B.serve as a push作为一种推动；C.cause anger导致某人轻微愤怒；D. Avoid taking things back避免拿回东西。只有A想符合划线词义。故选A。
【小题3】细节题：根据第五段中“The children who were initially faced with an easy choice or who were required to give their sticker to Doggie, on the other hand, shared fewer stickers with Ellie ”最初孩子们面临着一个简单的选择或着被要求把他们的贴纸给小狗,要么与艾莉分享更少的贴纸。由此可知这是被要求的。故选B。
【小题4】主旨题：根据文章内容可知文章表明孩子做出艰难选择会对他们的分享行为有影响，他们可能会变的慷概。故选D。