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Did you know that money affects children's behavior even if they don't know the value of it? That's what a new s urvey is saying.  The act of handling money makes young children work harder and give less, according to new research published by the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management and University of Illinois at Chicago, reports newswise.com. The effect was observed in children who lacked concrete knowledge of money's purpose, and persisted despite the denomination of the money. "Money is a double-edged sword. It produces good outcomes in terms of concentration and effort, but bad outcomes when it comes to helping, taking, and donating." the web site quotes Professor Kathleen Vohs, the Land O'Lakes Chair in Marketing at the University of Minnesota and co- author of the study.  Five experiments and one study tested 550 children (ages 3-6) in Poland and the United States. In one experiment, the children were asked to...

Now this is a stumper. Did you know that the more religious an upbringing you have, the less altruistic you turn out to be? That's so says a new study ,  newswise.com reports. Many families believe religion plays an essential role in childhood moral development. But children of religious parents may not be as altruistic as those parents think, according to a new international study from the University of Chicago. A team of developmental psychologists led by Prof. Jean Decety examined the perceptions and behavior of children between ages 5 and 12, from Canada, China, Jordan, South Africa, Turkey and the United States. The study assessed the children’s tendency to share—a measure of their altruism—and their inclination to judge and punish others for bad behavior. Children from religious families were less likely to share with others than were children from non-religious families. A religious upbringing also was associated with more punitive tendencies in response t...

A while back I wrote about how, in some parts of the country, people were " paying it forward " -- paying for the coffee of the person behind them at Starbucks or at the drive-up window. But a new study has found that it may hurt to be too generous.   According to The New York Times, " if you receive or observe an act of help, you become more likely to help others, even if your own action won’t be directly reciprocated or rewarded,"  demonstrating that the effect of a single act of kindness can in fact ripple through a social network, setting off chains of generosity that reach far beyond the original act.   But observing people doing too much for others can backfire, the study discovered.   " We found that receiving and observing generosity can both significantly increase your likelihood of being generous toward a stranger, but that if you observe a high enough level of generosity, your willingness to help suffers — you become a 'bystander' w...