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Sierksma J. Children perpetuate competence-based inequality when they help peers. NPJ SCIENCE OF LEARNING 2023; 8:41. [PMID: 37730707 PMCID: PMC10511518 DOI: 10.1038/s41539-023-00192-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/14/2023] [Accepted: 09/07/2023] [Indexed: 09/22/2023]
Abstract
Exchanges of help between children are common and often have positive consequences. But not all help is equally beneficial, for example because some help does not provide an opportunity to practice and develop skills. Here I examine whether young children might perpetuate competence-based inequality by providing incompetent peers with less opportunity to practice and improve their skills compared to competent peers. Study 1 (N = 253, 6-9 years) shows that young children understand not all help is equally beneficial: Children think that peers who receive empowerment (hints) vs. non-empowerment (correct answers) help can learn more. Study 2 (N = 80) and 3 (N = 41) then assessed children's (7-9 years) actual helping behavior in a lab-based experiment. Through a cover story, participants were introduced to two unknown, same-age children whom they later overheard were either good or not good at solving puzzles (Study 2) or math (Study 3). Subsequently, participants got to help both of them with a puzzle-quiz (Study 2) or a math-quiz (Study 3) by providing either empowerment or non-empowerment when they asked for help. Across both studies, children were more likely to provide empowerment help to competent peers, and non-empowerment help to incompetent peers. This work suggests that when young children perceive differences in competence (e.g., based on stereotypes), they contribute to maintaining the status quo by providing the most vulnerable students, that would profit the most from improving their skills, less opportunity to do so.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jellie Sierksma
- Department of Developmental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
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Fast AA, Ravi S, Olson KR. When it is better to give than to receive: Children's giving and happiness. SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT 2023. [DOI: 10.1111/sode.12671] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/11/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Anne A. Fast
- Department of Psychology University of Washington Seattle Washington USA
- Department of Psychology Western Washington University Bellingham Washington USA
| | - Sanjana Ravi
- Department of Psychology University of Washington Seattle Washington USA
- Department of Psychology & Human Development Vanderbilt University Nashville Tennessee USA
| | - Kristina R. Olson
- Department of Psychology University of Washington Seattle Washington USA
- Department of Psychology Princeton University Princeton New Jersey USA
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Hepach R, Engelmann JM, Herrmann E, Gerdemann SC, Tomasello M. Evidence for a developmental shift in the motivation underlying helping in early childhood. Dev Sci 2023; 26:e13253. [PMID: 35191158 PMCID: PMC10078187 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13253] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/24/2021] [Revised: 01/27/2022] [Accepted: 02/08/2022] [Indexed: 12/15/2022]
Abstract
We investigated children's positive emotions as an indicator of their underlying prosocial motivation. In Study 1, 2-, and 5-year-old children (N = 64) could either help an individual or watch as another person provided help. Following the helping event and using depth sensor imaging, we measured children's positive emotions through changes in postural elevation. For 2-year-olds, helping the individual and watching another person help was equally rewarding; 5-year-olds showed greater postural elevation after actively helping. In Study 2, 5-year-olds' (N = 59) positive emotions following helping were greater when an audience was watching. Together, these results suggest that 2-year-old children have an intrinsic concern that individuals be helped whereas 5-year-old children have an additional, strategic motivation to improve their reputation by helping.
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Affiliation(s)
- Robert Hepach
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
| | - Jan M Engelmann
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
| | - Esther Herrmann
- Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK
| | - Stella C Gerdemann
- Department of Research Methods in Early Child Development, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany.,Leipzig Research Center for Early Child Development, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Michael Tomasello
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA.,Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
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Dahl A, Gross RL, Siefert C. Young Children's Judgments and Reasoning about Prosocial Acts: Impermissible, Suberogatory, Obligatory, or Supererogatory? COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2020; 55:100908. [PMID: 32699466 PMCID: PMC7375415 DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2020.100908] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
In deciding when to help, individuals reason about whether prosocial acts are impermissible, suberogatory, obligatory, or supererogatory. This research examined judgments and reasoning about prosocial actions at three to five years of age, when explicit moral judgments and reasoning are emerging. Three-to five-year-olds (N = 52) were interviewed about prosocial actions that varied in costs/benefits to agents/recipients, agent-recipient relationship, and recipient goal valence. Children were also interviewed about their own prosocial acts. Adults (N = 56) were interviewed for comparison. Children commonly judged prosocial actions as obligatory. Overall, children were more likely than adults to say that agents should help. Children's judgments and reasoning reflected concerns with welfare as well as agent and recipient intent. The findings indicate that 3-to 5-year-olds make distinct moral judgments about prosocial actions, and that judgments and reasoning about prosocial acts subsequently undergo major developments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Audun Dahl
- Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz
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Abstract
When individuals experience empathy , they often seek to bolster others’ well-being. But what do empathizers want others to feel? Though psychologists have studied empathy and prosociality for decades, this question has yet to be clearly addressed. This is because virtually all existing research focuses on cases in which improving others’ well-being also comprises heightening their positive affect or decreasing their negative affect and helping them reach their own emotional goals. In this review, I argue that real-life empathic goals encompass a broader range—including sometimes worsening targets’ affect or contravening their wishes in order to improve their well-being—that can be productively integrated into the framework of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER). I review the empathic IER spectrum in a number of contexts, including close relationships, professional caregiving, and group-based emotions. Integrating empathy and IER provides a synthetic and generative way to ask new questions about how social emotions produce prosocial actions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jamil Zaki
- Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA
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Hepach R, Benziad L, Tomasello M. Chimpanzees help others with what they want; children help them with what they need. Dev Sci 2019; 23:e12922. [PMID: 31710758 DOI: 10.1111/desc.12922] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/16/2018] [Revised: 07/17/2019] [Accepted: 10/29/2019] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
Humans, including young children, are strongly motivated to help others, even paying a cost to do so. Humans' nearest primate relatives, great apes, are likewise motivated to help others, raising the question of whether the motivations of humans and apes are the same. Here we compared the underlying motivation to help in human children and chimpanzees. Both species understood the situation and helped a conspecific in a straightforward situation. However, when helpers knew that what the other was requesting would not actually help her, only children gave her what she needed instead of giving her what she requested. These results suggest that both chimpanzees and human children help others but the underlying motivation for why they help differs. In comparison to chimpanzees, young children help in a paternalistic manner. The evolutionary hypothesis is that uniquely human socio-ecologies based on interdependent cooperation gave rise to uniquely human prosocial motivations to help others paternalistically.
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Affiliation(s)
- Robert Hepach
- Research Methods in Early Child Development, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Sachsen, Germany
| | - Leïla Benziad
- Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Michael Tomasello
- Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.,Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
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Dahl A. The Science of Early Moral Development: on Defining, Constructing, and Studying Morality from Birth. ADVANCES IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND BEHAVIOR 2018; 56:1-35. [PMID: 30846044 DOI: 10.1016/bs.acdb.2018.11.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/27/2022]
Abstract
The first 4 years of moral development are perhaps the most transformative. Helpless neonates become infants who routinely help and harm others; infants develop into preschoolers who make moral judgments based on moral concerns with welfare. Over the past two decades, there has been tremendous empirical progress, but also theoretical stalemates, in research on early moral development. To advance the field, this chapter argues for providing definitions of key terms, adopting an interactionist and constructivist approach (eschewing the dichotomy between innate and learned characteristics), and combining naturalistic and experimental methods. On this basis, the chapter reviews research on how children's orientations toward helping and harming others develop gradually through everyday social interactions in the early years. In these interactions, children play active roles through initiation, negotiation, protest, and construction. The chapter concludes with key questions for future research on early moral development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Audun Dahl
- University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, United States.
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Aknin LB, Van de Vondervoort JW, Hamlin JK. Positive feelings reward and promote prosocial behavior. Curr Opin Psychol 2018; 20:55-59. [DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.08.017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 100] [Impact Index Per Article: 16.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/25/2017] [Revised: 06/21/2017] [Accepted: 08/03/2017] [Indexed: 01/10/2023]
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Hepach R, Warneken F. Editorial overview: Early development of prosocial behavior: Revealing the foundation of human prosociality. Curr Opin Psychol 2018; 20:iv-viii. [PMID: 29510908 DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2018.02.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Robert Hepach
- Department of Research Methods in Early Child Development, Leipzig University, 04109 Leipzig, Germany.
| | - Felix Warneken
- Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
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Heiphetz L. The development and importance of shared reality in the domains of opinion, morality, and religion. Curr Opin Psychol 2017; 23:1-5. [PMID: 29156322 DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.11.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/07/2017] [Accepted: 11/03/2017] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
The importance of shared reality emerges early in human development. Infants and young children notice when others share their beliefs, and information about shared beliefs influences their social judgments. This article reviews recent research on the importance of shared beliefs in three domains that have been widely investigated over the past several years-opinions, moral views, and religious beliefs. I argue that shared religious beliefs appear especially influential and suggest several reasons why this might be the case, including the perceived link between religion and morality as well as the strong role that religious beliefs play in personal identity. Future research can further test these possibilities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Larisa Heiphetz
- Department of Psychology, Columbia University, 1190 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY 10027, USA.
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Davidov M, Vaish A, Knafo-Noam A, Hastings PD. The Motivational Foundations of Prosocial Behavior From A Developmental Perspective-Evolutionary Roots and Key Psychological Mechanisms: Introduction to the Special Section. Child Dev 2016; 87:1655-1667. [DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12639] [Citation(s) in RCA: 66] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/17/2022]
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