a1
Within the biological tradition of ethology discussed earlier, several studies have also
provided evidence that possessiveness precedes altruism. It is important to realize, however,
that there is considerable opportunity for confounded interpretations in ethological research
on dominance and sharing. For example, Eisenberg-Berg, Hand, and Haake’s (1981) observed
that preschoolers who stayed within restricted areas surrendered their possessions more
frequently than those who moved more freely about the classroom. The interpretation of this
was that those with restricted movement were “territorial” and that they “shared” more than
non-territorial children. In a subsequent study, Eisenberg and Giallanza (1984) again considered
surrendering to be evidence of sharing.
Savin-Willlams, Small and Zeldin (1981) compared ethological, peer-rating and
psychometric measures of dominance and altruism in two groups of adolescent boys in a
summer camp. Although not discussed by the authors, their data show that all measures of
dominance were positively correlated with all measures of altruism; in particular, the dominance
subscale of the California Psychological Inventory (Megargee, 1972) was significantly related to
the frequency of altruistic behavior (n=12, r=.56, p<.05) and to the Schwartz (1968) Ascription
of Responsibility Scale (n=12, r=.73, p<.01). These correlations could be reflections of social
desirability or extroversion, or it could be that dominance is leadership and that leaders tend to
be altruistic towards their dependents (Krebs, 1970). Thus, power would be antecedent to social
responsibility.
This interpretation would concur with the sociobiological study by Charlesworth and La
Freniere (1983) in which preschoolers with high dominance status did use an attractive toy more
than those with low dominance, but the dominant children aiso facilitated cooperation, sharing
and overall use. Camras (1984) replicated this with the refinement of using teacher ratings to
determine dominance independently of the behaviors being observed. In a longitudinal study
of two-year-olds in Israel, Frankel and Arbel (1980) reported that dominance relationships
enhanced group formation and that prior possession of an object had priority over dominance
status in determining object use.
A third tradition of studying property and moral development in children emerges from the
work of Piaget (1932), which in turn can be traced to Baldwin (1897) and to concepts of self and
dialectic in nineteenth century German philosophy. Although much of the early research on
children’s ego development and use of self-referent speech was inspired by Piaget, his impact