Abstract
Socialization strategies in German middle class families focus on psychological autonomy with a special emphasis on individuality and the inner world. Small children experience mainly dyadic communication structures. It can be assumed that these experiences affect their cooperative behavior with other children. In a structured observational situation, we observed that triads of 4–5 years old German children do solve a cooperation task less than 10% of the time, despite the explicit instruction to do so. Only one of 20 triads worked predominantly triadically. Most of the children worked in an isolated mode. Children in a comparison group of dyads acted at least half of the time dyadically. Cooperation seems to be easier for children in dyads compared to triads. The results highlight consequences of cultural practices that may not be intended.