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Early childhood investment impacts social decision-making four decades later

Luo, Y; Hétu, S; Lohrenz, T; Hula, A; Dayan, P; Ramey, SL; Sonnier-Netto, L; ... Ramey, C; + view all (2018) Early childhood investment impacts social decision-making four decades later. Nature Communications , 9 , Article 4705. 10.1030/s41467-018-07138-5. Green open access

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Abstract

Early childhood educational investment produces positive effects on cognitive and non-cognitive skills, health, and socio-economic success. However, the effects of such interventions on social decision-making later in life are unknown. We recalled participants from one of the oldest randomized controlled studies of early childhood investment—the Abecedarian Project (ABC)—to participate in well-validated interactive economic games that probe social norm enforcement and planning. We show that in a repeated-play ultimatum game, ABC participants who received high-quality early interventions strongly reject unequal division of money across players (disadvantageous or advantageous) even at significant cost to themselves. Using a multi-round trust game and computational modeling of social exchange, we show that the same intervention participants also plan further into the future. These findings suggest that high quality early childhood investment can result in long-term changes in social decision-making and promote social norm enforcement in order to reap future benefits.

Type: Article
Title: Early childhood investment impacts social decision-making four decades later
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1030/s41467-018-07138-5
Publisher version: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07138-5
Language: English
Additional information: © The Authors 2018. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Keywords: Decision making, Human behaviour
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10063667
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