Safe environment promotes promote children’s sharing behavior adaptive for future cooperation

Within the evolutionary life history framework, this study tests the hypothesis that benign and predictable environments, which provide higher prospects for future coexistence, foster slow life history and the related prosociality and altruism. In a sample of 330 families with a child in early middle childhood, mothers reported on family economic status and neighborhood safety conditions when their child was growing up. The children participated in a sharing game at age eight. The findings reveal that family economic status and neighborhood safety condition interactively affect children’s sharing behavior. In safe neighborhoods, children from wealthier families demonstrated more prosocial and altruistic behavior, showing a preference for generous choices (e.g., opting for 2/2, where they provide toys for the other party, over 2/0, where they give nothing, and also preferring 2/2 over 4/0, where they sacrifice their own toys to provide for others). This trend was not observed in children from unsafe neighborhoods. These results enhance our understanding of children’s sharing behavior adaptive for human cooperation.