Effects of Social Change on Mexican Children Group Interaction using the Madsen’s Cooperation Board

This is the third in a series of studies that explores theory-driven hypotheses linking ecological in Mexico to developmental change. All three are based on repeating studies carried out by Millard Madsen decades earlier in the same cities with comparable samples (Madsen, 1967, 1971; Madsen & Kagan, 1973). All three use Greenfield`s theory which claims that human development is not constant across historical time, but changes as a function of changes in the sociodemographic environment (Greenfield, 2009, 2016). This particular study used the Madsen’s (1967) Cooperation Board to assess cooperation and competition in groups of four children. Following Greenfield’s theoretical contributions, we predicted that, as Mexico has moved in the Gesellschaft direction over five decades, children`s cooperative behavior would decline in the cooperation board game, as competition rose. A comparison between data published by Madsen in 1967 and data using the same procedure in parallel samples in the same settings collected in 2017 was performed. Three ecologies were represented: poor rural (San Damián Texóloc,Tlaxcala), middle-class urban (Puebla), and poor urban (Puebla). In the 1967 sample of 288, and in the 2017 a total of 228, were second graders. All participants in groups of four interacted under two conditions: group and individual reward. As we hypothesized children`s cooperative behavior would decline, results showed this 2017 decline for both the group and individual reward conditions across all three ecologies (binomial test, p = .016). Overall, these findings once more strengthened Greenfield’s theoretical propositions regarding social change and its effects on human development.