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The Influence of Moral Stories on Preschool Children’s Sharing
- BAO Wei, CHEN Liyu, WANG Fuxing, YAN Ni
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Psychological Development and Education. 2026, 42(5):
609-609.
doi:10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2026.05.01
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Sharing behavior, a key prosocial act involving voluntary resource allocation, critically shapes children’s social development. Drawing on Bandura’s Observational Learning Theory, children learn behaviors by observing models, with moral stories serving as influential examples. While prior work confirms moral stories boost sharing, differences between anthropomorphic and human stories and their mechanisms remain unclear. Moreover, individual differences in anthropomorphic tendency may moderate effects, yet evidence is limited. This study compared the efficacy of human (vs. anthropomorphic) stories in promoting sharing, with attention, memory, comprehension, and imitation motivation as mediators, and anthropomorphic tendency as a moderator. Hypotheses included: (1) Human stories outperform anthropomorphic stories in enhancing sharing; (2) Anthropomorphic stories elicit stronger attention, memory, and comprehension but weaker imitation motivation; (3) Mental processes mediate story effects; and (4) Anthropomorphic tendency moderates anthropomorphic stories’ efficacy. This experimental study examined how anthropomorphic stories influence preschoolers’ sharing behavior. Participants included 145 children (from an initial pool of 153 recruited from two kindergartens), randomly assigned to three groups: anthropomorphic story, human story, or control group. Standardized tools were used: the PPVT-R (vocabulary assessment), an adapted theory-of-mind task, and the IDAQ-CF (anthropomorphism tendency). Stimuli comprised three story types (anthropomorphic moral, human moral, neutral). Post-reading tests measured attention, memory, comprehension, and imitation motivation; sharing behavior was quantified via a sticker allocation task (anonymous distribution). The five-phase procedure included: (1) Pre-tests (theory-of-mind/vocabulary); (2) Pre-sharing (baseline); (3) Story-reading (randomized story); (4) Post-reading questions (cognitive/motivational measures); (5) Post-sharing (behavioral change). Prerecorded materials ensured standardization. Ethical approval and parental consent were obtained; children received stickers as compensation. The results of the study showed that: (1) There were significant differences in the sharing behavior of children in the three different groups over time, and there was no significant difference in the sharing scores of the three groups at the pre-test, while at the post-test, the sharing scores of the children who read the human morality stories were significantly higher than those of the anthropomorphic story reading group and the control group, and there was no significant difference in the anthropomorphic story reading group and the control group; and (2) When the control group was used as a reference, the parallel mediating effects of motivation to imitate were significant between human stories and sharing behaviors, whereas there was no such mediating effect in the anthropomorphic story reading group; (3) In the anthropomorphic story reading group, sharing scores of the group with low anthropomorphic tendency level were significantly lower than those of the group with high anthropomorphic tendency level, so there was a moderating effect of anthropomorphic tendency level in the relationship between anthropomorphic morality stories and sharing behaviors. It was concluded that human morality tales have better educational effects on children’s sharing behavior and promote sharing by increasing comprehension and imitation motivation, while children with high anthropomorphic tendencies showed more significant improvements in sharing behavior after reading anthropomorphic tales compared to children with low anthropomorphic tendencies. In conclusion, this study clarifies the role of morality tales in promoting the development of sharing behavior in preschoolers.
