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Radovanovic M, Solby H, Rose KS, Hwang J, Yucer E, Sommerville JA. Toddlers' Helping Behavior Is Affected by the Effortful Costs Associated With Helping Others. Dev Sci 2024:e13569. [PMID: 39375071 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13569] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/25/2023] [Revised: 01/31/2024] [Accepted: 03/25/2024] [Indexed: 10/09/2024]
Abstract
Although the presence of early helping behavior has been firmly established, it is unclear to what extent children are willing to adopt costs to help others, as well as how this willingness changes as children get older. Canadian 21- to 36-month-olds (N = 48) participated in four helping tasks varying in the type and degree of effort required to help (lifting force, cognitive load, the number of steps in a task, and pushing force). When costs were lower, toddlers were not only more likely to help but also provided help more readily and helped in ways that prioritized others' needs. Importantly, we found that age and how costly helping was to individual children each uniquely predicted high-cost helping, but not low-cost helping. Overall, we demonstrate that toddlers' helping is sensitive to a variety of effortful costs, while simultaneously demonstrating that maturation and individual costs appear to uniquely influence high-cost helping.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mia Radovanovic
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
| | - Hannah Solby
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
| | - Katie S Rose
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
| | - Jaemin Hwang
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
| | - Ece Yucer
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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2
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Callaghan T, Colasante T, Muhammad S, Corbit J, Yavuz-Muren M, Raffaele C, Akter R, Al Janaideh R, Duan TY, Didkowsky N, Beuze JN, Homer B, Cameron CA, Malti T. Fostering Prosociality in Refugee Children: An Intervention With Rohingya Children. Monogr Soc Res Child Dev 2024; 89:7-109. [PMID: 39148465 DOI: 10.1111/mono.12477] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/17/2023] [Revised: 05/27/2024] [Accepted: 06/01/2024] [Indexed: 08/17/2024]
Abstract
Prosocial behavior is a distinguishing characteristic of human nature. Although prosocial behaviors emerge early in development, contextual factors play an important role in how these behaviors are manifested over development. A large body of research focuses on the trajectory of prosocial development across diverse cultures and investigating contexts that foster it. Against this backdrop of developmental research endeavoring to understand and enhance the cooperative side of humanity, is the catastrophic impact of profoundly negative forces on social-emotional development for children forced to flee from violent conflict. Close to half a million Rohingya children, whose families were forced to flee genocide in Myanmar, now live in the largest refugee camp in the world. To examine the resilience of human prosociality in the face of extreme adversity, we documented initial levels of prosociality in Rohingya refugee children living in a mega-camp (Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh) and the extent to which those levels were improved following a multifaceted intervention designed to foster prosociality. The research was a partnership between Rohingya community members with lived experience, humanitarian practitioners, and developmental researchers. A sample of 152 Rohingya children (5-12 years) participated in pre- and postintervention assessments of prosocial behaviors and related cognitive-affective processes. The 10-day collaboration-based intervention was implemented between November 2021 and January 2022 by Rohingya researchers. Birthplace was used as a proxy measure of trauma level. Children born in Myanmar (N = 88) directly experienced relatively higher levels of trauma (genocide, forced migration) than children who were born in the camp after their families fled from Myanmar (N = 64). Children were individually tested pre- and postintervention with a task battery, including a helping (Origami) and two sharing tasks (Dictator Game [DG], Forced Choice sharing) measuring prosocial behavior. Assessments of related cognitive-affective processes included measures of empathic responding and emotion perspective-taking in story tasks (Imagine, Judgment) and executive function (EF) skills (Younger: Hearts & Flowers; Older: Dimensional Change Card Sorting). Small group intervention sessions conducted over 10 days targeted these prosocial behaviors and cognitive-affective processes and were based on collaborative activities, emotion perspective taking and EF skills training with the same partner throughout the intervention phase. We used latent change modeling to examine initial levels (preintervention) and intervention-related changes in these measures from pre- to postintervention. Prosocial responding was found across all measures (preintervention) and improvements (pre- to postintervention change) were apparent across most measures. Age and birthplace variables were significant predictors of initial levels and intervention-related change. Initial levels: Regarding age, older children (9-12 years) showed higher levels than younger children (5-8 years) of sharing in the Forced Choice task but lower levels in the DG. Older children also showed higher levels of empathic responding when asked to report how they would feel and respond to another person's misfortune in the Imagine task. Regarding birthplace, prior to the intervention camp-born children showed higher levels than Myanmar-born children of helping in the Origami task and reported more behavioral responses indicating how they would respond to misfortune in the Imagine task. In contrast, Myanmar-born children had higher levels of sharing in the DG and consistently chose equality over inequality in the Forced Choice sharing task, even when their partner would receive more, indicating a pattern of generosity in these children. Myanmar-born children had lower levels than camp-born children on EF measures. Intervention-related change: Regarding age, older but not younger children were more likely to increase choices for equality over inequality on the Forced Choice sharing task following the intervention. Regarding birthplace and helping, camp-born children increased behaviors that helped their partner make origami shapes themselves ("how-to" helping), whereas Myanmar-born children increased behavior that took over folding for their partner ("do-for" helping). For sharing tasks, Myanmar-born but not camp-born children increased sharing in the DG and showed an increased pattern of generosity in Forced Choice sharing task. In the Imagine story task, children born in Myanmar were more likely than those born in camp to increase empathic responding (i.e., imagining how they would feel). Children born in Myanmar showed less improvement on EF measures than children born in the camp. Taken together, these findings provide evidence that in a context of extreme adversity, Rohingya children exhibited prosociality and benefitted from a multifaceted intervention. Our research adds credence to the view that human prosociality is a fundamental characteristic of humanity that not only survives but can be enhanced in even the most adverse of childhood environments. Our multifaceted intervention, which was implemented within a collaborative social context and targeted prosocial behaviors and related cognitive-affective processes, was designed to be easily implemented within existing psychosocial support programs in refugee contexts. As the numbers of children affected by violent conflict and forced migration rise alarmingly worldwide, there is a critical need to expand research partnerships that aim to improve developmental outcomes for these millions of children.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tara Callaghan
- Psychology Department, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada
| | | | | | - John Corbit
- Psychology Department, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada
| | | | - Charles Raffaele
- Educational Communication and Technology Program, Steinhardt, New York University, New York, New York, USA
| | - Rozina Akter
- Psychology Department, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada
| | - Redab Al Janaideh
- Centre for Leadership and Learning, York Regional District School Board, Aurora, Ontario, Canada
| | - Tz-Yu Duan
- Educational and Counselling Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
| | - Nora Didkowsky
- Psychology Department, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada
| | | | - Bruce Homer
- Program in Educational Psychology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, New York, USA
| | - Catherine Ann Cameron
- Psychology Department, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
| | - Tina Malti
- Psychology Department, University of Toronto, Alexander von Humbolt Professor, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany
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Gibhardt S, Aitken J, Low R, Henderson AME. Task demands matter in shaping how preschoolers express instrumental helping, comforting, and sharing: A longitudinal analysis. J Exp Child Psychol 2024; 243:105929. [PMID: 38663123 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2024.105929] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/20/2023] [Revised: 02/08/2024] [Accepted: 03/24/2024] [Indexed: 05/04/2024]
Abstract
The current research provides a detailed longitudinal examination of instrumental helping, comforting, and sharing in early childhood. Preschoolers completed a series of prosocial behavior tasks when they were 2 years old (n = 200), 3 years old (n = 161), and 4 years old (n = 135). As expected, children's prosocial behaviors increased with age across all tasks. Yet children's prosocial behaviors were more nuanced than expected, with significant differences in scores between trials within each type of prosocial behavior. Cross-lagged panel modelling revealed that instrumental helping at 3 years predicted comforting when an experimenter was sad or cold at 4 years. Furthermore, children's comforting of a sad experimenter at 3 years predicted sharing their own toy with a sad experimenter at 4 years. These findings offer novel insights into the developmental trajectory of three types of prosocial behavior in early childhood.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sina Gibhardt
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland 1010, New Zealand; Humboldt Research Group for Child Development, Leipzig University, 04109 Leipzig, Germany.
| | - Jess Aitken
- School of Psychology, University of Auckland, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
| | - Rachel Low
- School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington 6140, New Zealand
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Białek M, Stefanczyk MM, Kowal M, Sorokowski P. Ownership-attributing intuitions are cross-culturally shared. Child Dev 2024. [PMID: 38523474 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.14092] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/26/2024]
Abstract
This study tested intuitions about ownership in children of Dani people, an indigenous Papuan society (N = 79, Mage = 7, 49.4% females). The results show that similar to studies with children from Western societies, children infer ownership from (1) control of permission, (2) ownership of the territory the object is located in, and (3) manmade versus natural origins of the object. By contrast, they did not (4) infer ownership from the first observed possession of an object. Additionally, Papuan children showed (5) an absolute first possession heuristic, whereby they assigned ownership to a person who achieved a goal, in contrast to a person who was first to pursue this goal but failed to be the first to claim it.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michał Białek
- Institute of Psychology, University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland
| | | | - Marta Kowal
- Institute of Psychology, University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland
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Radovanovic M, Chao TWT, Onyshko E, Huynh QDT, Liu YL, Sommerville JA. Not just if, but how much: Children and adults use cost and need to make evaluations about generosity across contexts. Cognition 2023; 238:105533. [PMID: 37390606 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105533] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/04/2022] [Revised: 06/20/2023] [Accepted: 06/22/2023] [Indexed: 07/02/2023]
Abstract
Evaluations of others' generosity are critical for selecting quality social partners, yet the factors which systematically affect these evaluations and whether they vary across development are still relatively unclear. Here, we establish that two key dimensions adults and children (aged 4 to 7 years) consider are the cost associated with a giving action and the need of the recipient, through six pre-registered experiments with Canadian and U.S. American participants. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that adults' and children's third-party evaluations of generosity are sensitive to variations in each factor, across several operationalizations of cost and need in both comparative and standalone contexts, suggesting cost and need can be spontaneously evoked. However, children's responses were more consistent for need scenarios than cost scenarios. In Experiments 3 and 4, we modified our scenarios to evaluate whether variations in cost and need are considered simultaneously in both generosity evaluations and affiliative preferences. Adults' and older children's (ages 6 to 7) evaluations of generosity and affiliative preferences were sensitive to both factors, but younger children did not utilize this information systematically. Importantly, in Experiments 5 and 6, adults' and older children's generosity evaluations were only sensitive to information about cost and need when the giver's actions conferred utility to a recipient, but not when actions were self-serving. Taken together, we establish robust evidence that cost and need are considered in generosity evaluations by demonstrating that Canadian and U.S. American adults and children utilize this information consistently, spontaneously, and simultaneously.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mia Radovanovic
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada.
| | - Tim Wei-Ting Chao
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada
| | - Emily Onyshko
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada; Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1V6, Canada
| | | | - Yang Leona Liu
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada
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Tavassoli N, Dunfield K, Kleis A, Recchia H, Conto LP. Preschoolers’ responses to prosocial opportunities during naturalistic interactions with peers: A cross‐cultural comparison. SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT 2022. [DOI: 10.1111/sode.12620] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Nasim Tavassoli
- Department of Education Concordia University Montreal Quebec Canada
| | - Kristen Dunfield
- Department of Psychology Concordia University Montreal Quebec Canada
| | - Astrid Kleis
- Department of Psychology Concordia University Montreal Quebec Canada
| | - Holly Recchia
- Department of Education Concordia University Montreal Quebec Canada
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Corbit J, Didkowsky N, Gora V, Reddy H, Muhammad S, Callaghan T. Facilitating the prosocial development of Rohingya refugee children. J Exp Child Psychol 2022; 220:105414. [PMID: 35366609 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105414] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/17/2022] [Revised: 02/23/2022] [Accepted: 02/23/2022] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
Prosociality is essential for the success of human societies. Children's prosocial development is found to increase in contexts that foster collaboration or emotion perspective taking and is negatively affected by exposure to extreme psychosocial trauma and adversity. Based on these findings, we assessed the effect of collaboration and emotion perspective taking on three types of prosocial behavior-helping, sharing, and comforting-in Rohingya children living in a refugee settlement in India (N = 122; age range = 4-11 years). Half of the children were born in Myanmar (i.e., experienced forced migration from genocide), and half were born in the refugee settlement after their families left Myanmar. We also included a small sample of Rohingya Canadian children (N = 20; age range = 3-12 years) as a within-culture comparison of overall levels of prosocial responding, which were higher in this group relative to children in a refugee settlement. We assigned children in the refugee settlement to one of three conditions-Collaboration, Emotion Perspective Taking (intervention conditions), or Drawing (control condition)-and assessed the three types of prosocial responding following the intervention. Prosocial responding was highest after Collaboration for children born in the refugee settlement and was highest after Emotion Perspective Taking for children born in Myanmar. Overall, these findings point to the potential prosocial benefit in refugee contexts for intervention programs that are responsive to children's lived experience.
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Affiliation(s)
- John Corbit
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4R2, Canada.
| | - Nora Didkowsky
- Department of Psychology, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia B2G 2W5, Canada
| | - Vikas Gora
- SAVE THE CHILDREN | GM - State Programme Telangana Andhra Pradesh State Programme Office, Secunderabad, Telangana State, India
| | - Harini Reddy
- SAVE THE CHILDREN | GM - State Programme Telangana Andhra Pradesh State Programme Office, Secunderabad, Telangana State, India
| | - Saifullah Muhammad
- Department of Psychology, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia B2G 2W5, Canada
| | - Tara Callaghan
- Department of Psychology, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia B2G 2W5, Canada
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Zhang Q, Duan Z, Xiang D, Yu Y, Tian J. The Effects of Prosocial Cartoon Examples on Children's Donating Behavior. Psychol Res Behav Manag 2021; 14:1257-1268. [PMID: 34408510 PMCID: PMC8364968 DOI: 10.2147/prbm.s315068] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/09/2021] [Accepted: 07/22/2021] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
PURPOSE In this study, we examined whether prosocial cartoons could inspire children to donate toys to others immediately upon exposure. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS Cartoons were rated as prosocial or control via 80 adults. One hundred and fifty-six children participated in the study (M age = 5.29, SD = 0.79). Children in the experimental group were exposed to cartoons in which the main character had a large number of donating behaviors, while children in the control group watched cartoons without donating behaviors (randomized controlled study). They watched these cartoons for 4 consecutive days. Afterwards, children's donating behaviors toward their peers were assessed in the Toy Donation Task (TDT). An analytic method of 2 (cartoon: prosocial vs control) × 2 (gender: male vs female) × 3 (age: 4 vs 5 vs 6) analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to make result analyses. RESULTS The empirical results indicated that watching cartoons specifically depicting charitable donations (and not cartoons with other prosocial content) increased donations for charitable causes, whilst watching the control cartoons (cartoons without prosocial content) which did not depict characters acting in an antisocial way did not increase donating behavior. Specifically, 5-year-old female children reported more donating behavior than 6-year-old female children and 4-year-old female children, whilst no significant age effects were found among male children. Here, 4-6-year-old female children and 4-5-year-old male children in the prosocial cartoon condition reported more donating behavior than those in the control cartoon condition. CONCLUSION These findings indicated an accumulating positive effect of watching cartoons with donating content on children's donating behavior, especially for 4-6-year-old female children and 4-5-year-old male children.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qian Zhang
- Center for Studies of Education and Psychology of Minorities in Southwest Area & Faculty of Education, Chongqing, People’s Republic of China
| | - ZheMin Duan
- Center for Studies of Education and Psychology of Minorities in Southwest Area & Faculty of Education, Chongqing, People’s Republic of China
| | - Dan Xiang
- Center for Studies of Education and Psychology of Minorities in Southwest Area & Faculty of Education, Chongqing, People’s Republic of China
| | - Yue Yu
- Center for Studies of Education and Psychology of Minorities in Southwest Area & Faculty of Education, Chongqing, People’s Republic of China
| | - JingJin Tian
- Dawn Innovation Kindergarten, Chongqing, People’s Republic of China
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Barragan RC, Meltzoff AN. Human infants can override possessive tendencies to share valued items with others. Sci Rep 2021; 11:9635. [PMID: 33953287 PMCID: PMC8100139 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-88898-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/12/2021] [Accepted: 04/16/2021] [Indexed: 02/03/2023] Open
Abstract
Possessiveness toward objects and sharing are competing tendencies that influence dyadic and group interactions within the primate lineage. A distinctive form of sharing in adult Homo sapiens involves active giving of high-valued possessions to others, without an immediate reciprocal benefit. In two Experiments with 19-month-old human infants (N = 96), we found that despite measurable possessive behavior toward their own personal objects (favorite toy, bottle), infants spontaneously gave these items to a begging stranger. Moreover, human infants exhibited this behavior across different types of objects that are relevant to theory (personal objects, sweet food, and common objects)-showing flexible generalizability not evidenced in non-human primates. We combined these data with a previous dataset, yielding a large sample of infants (N = 192), and identified sociocultural factors that may calibrate young infants' sharing of objects with others. The current findings show a proclivity that is rare or absent in our closest living relatives-the capacity to override possessive behavior toward personally valued objects by sharing those same desired objects with others.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rodolfo Cortes Barragan
- Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
- Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
| | - Andrew N Meltzoff
- Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
- Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
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