Differential developmental trajectories of the two components of indebtedness and their potential contributions to the transformation of friend-selection preference in mid-childhood

Upon receiving favors, adults can experience not only gratitude but also the negative feeling of indebtedness, both of which motivate them to build communal and/or exchange-oriented relationships with the benefactor. Yet, from the perspective of ontogeny, how indebtedness develops and how its development contributes to children’s social functions (e.g., friend-selection) remain unclear. Here, we developed a favor-exchange interpersonal game to systematically investigate mid-childhood (6 -12 years) children’s appraisals of the benefactor’ s intentions, feelings of indebtedness, and friend-selection preferences when receiving help from communal benefactors who did not need repayment or from exchange benefactors who needed repayment. Two experiments provided converging evidence demonstrating that, as age increases, mid-childhood children are more willing to make friends with communal benefactors than with exchange benefactors, with differential developmental trajectories of the two components of indebtedness (i.e., the feeling of guilt and the sense of obligation to repay) contributing to this transformation. Specifically, as age increased, participants reported a higher level of guilt and a lower level of obligation when perceiving communal intentions from the benefactor. Moreover, as age increased, participants were more likely to become friends with the benefactor out of the feeling of guilt rather than the sense of obligation, resulting in their increased preferences for communal benefactors. This study deepens our understanding of the development of indebtedness and social relationship preferences in mid-childhood, and shed lights on moral education from the perspective of social emotions.