Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of emotional stories and direct beneficiary experience on prosocial behavior through evaluating early childhood resource distribution behaviors.
Methods: The study was conducted on 154 infants aged 3 to 5 years, and data were collected included the number of candies distributed by infants to the beneficiaries under different conditions. First, we compared the dictionary and post-mortem of the number of candies distributed by infants to others following intervention between all infants who were randomly assigned to the emotional story (n=76) and contextual story (n=78) groups. Following the story intervention, there was a significant change in resource distribution behavior when the beneficiary experience (n=61) was given to infants with difficulty in equitable resource distribution (five resources).
Results: With in crease in age, infants’ resource distribution behavior increased, and resource distribution tended to become more equitable (five resources). In the first stage of intervention, the increase in resource distribution behavior was significantly higher in the emotional stories group than that in the other group. In the second stage of intervention, the number of candy division after death increased significantly when the child observed direct beneficiary experience. In other words, the more the infant recognized their own and others’ emotions and directly experienced theses, the more characteristics of pro-social behavior they displayed Conclusions: This study intended to explore the prosocial behavior of infants. Emotional stories considering the characteristics of infants and direct experience with beneficiaries have been shown to affect the infants’ resource distribution behavior, suggesting that emotional recognition-related experiences are developmentally related variables.