Poster #125 - Children’s Strategies to Reject Acting Prosocially toward Siblings and Friends: A Longitudinal Study

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

Children engage in helping and sharing early in life (e.g., Warneken & Tomasello, 2006), but they also likely engage in rejecting such acts (e.g., Waugh & Brownell, 2017). Rejecting to act prosocially may be due to a lack of motivation, which may vary across relationships (Eisenberg et al., 2015). For instance, in contrast to voluntary friend relationships, children do not need to make an effort to maintain the sibling relationship (Howe et al., 2011). Thus, children might use different strategies to reject engaging in prosocial behaviors while interacting with siblings and friends. Yet, the relationship differences that might develop children’s social understanding have received limited attention. The current study examined children’s strategies to reject helping and sharing in the context of close relationships. Specifically, we investigated (a) the differences between siblings and friends, and (b) developmental changes from early to middle childhood in children’s rejection of prosociality.
Participants included 44 English-speaking middle-class Caucasian families. At both Time 1 (T1) and at Time 2 (T2; three years later), each focal child (T1 Mage = 4.6 years) was video-recorded at home in two separate 15-minute play sessions; one session with the sibling (younger sibling: n = 20, T1 Mage = 2.9 years; older sibling: n = 24, T1 Mage = 6.3 years) and one with a same-aged friend. We coded the types of prosocial behaviors that were rejected (e.g., helping, sharing) as well as children’s strategies of rejection. Children’s rejection strategies included direct verbal rejection (e.g., “No, I am not giving it to you”), indirect verbal rejection (e.g., “you have the other car instead”), nonverbal rejection (e.g., tugging, hiding), emotional rejection (e.g., fussing), and passive refusal (e.g., not responding).
Repeated-measures ANOVA analyses revealed that children were more likely to reject opportunities to be prosocial with their sibling than with their friend (all differences are significant at p < .05). Moreover, children were more likely to reject sharing objects with their siblings than with friends, especially via direct verbal rejection. Children used direct verbal rejection more at T1 than at T2, whereas passive refusal was used more at T2 than at T1. Additionally, children used passive refusal more than other types of rejection regardless of play partner, especially when they did not want to help. Relatedly, while playing with their friend, children were more likely to use indirect verbal rejection to reject helping than when they played with their sibling.
Given that the sibling relationship is involuntary, children have no fear of losing this relationship (Howe et al., 2011) and therefore, they were more likely to explicitly reject opportunities to be prosocial. On the contrary, friends were more vigilant and implicit in rejecting to engage in prosocial acts. Besides, regardless of the play partner, rejecting to help seemed to be challenging, as it might convey a lack of caring or interest for the welfare of others. Overall, these findings enhance our knowledge about the ways in which children reject acting prosocially from early to middle childhood in the context of close relationships.

Authors

• Nasim Tavassoli, Concordia University
  Presenting Author

• Nina Howe, Concordia University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ganie B. DeHart, SUNY Geneseo
  Non-Presenting Author