What I want and what you want: children's thinking about the conflicts between their own desires and those of others

The goal of this study was to assess whether and how children carve out a personal sphere in the context of conflicts with their friends' desires and preferences. Seventy-two participants in three age groups (ages 5, 10, and 17) were interviewed about three hypothetical stories in which the main character's desires of various importance were in conflict with a friend's desires of various importance. Age differences were found - 5-year-old children made inconsistent judgments across different conditions, sometimes making self-oriented and sometimes making other-oriented choices and evaluations; 10-year-olds made predominantly other-oriented choices under all three conditions, and evaluated self-oriented choices most negatively when the desire of a friend outweighed the desire of the protagonist; and 17-year-olds distinguished strongly among the three conditions, making more self-oriented choices and evaluations when desires of both characters were of equal importance and more other-oriented choices and evaluations in the context of friend's weightier desire.