Prosocial Behavior in Young Preschoolers: A Cross-Cultural Study Across The Netherlands, India, and China

• In Event: 3-033 - Variability in Prosocial Behaviors: Social and Motivational Sources Across Cultures

Integrative Statement

Although prosocial behaviors have long been regarded as universal features that are immune to socialization until the preschool age or beyond (e.g., Hamlin, 2013; Wynn, 2009), an emerging group of studies are beginning to show early socialization effects (for reviews, see Brownell et al., 2017; Dahl, 2018; Kärtner, 2018). These associations have not been consistent across cultures, however. Cultural specific relationships between parental practices and toddlers’ instrumental helping were found, with punitive practices being positively correlated with helping behavior in collectivistic cultures, but negatively in individualistic cultures (Giner Torréns & Kärtner, 2017). In addition, parents socialize young children’s prosocial behavior within a cultural context through their own values, the goals they set for the child, and the practices they use to specifically encourage prosociality. The present study compared the prosocial behavior of Dutch, Indian and Chinese preschoolers and determined whether parental values, socialization goals, and practices could explain any between- and within-country differences in prosociality.
In total 101 Dutch toddlers (M = 34.11 months, SD = 3.94 months, 55 boys), 37 Indian toddlers (M = 34.71 months, SD = 7.82 months, 15 boys), and 89 Chinese toddlers (M = 48.54 months, SD = 6.15 months, 44 boys) completed three experimental tasks (one for instrumental helping, sharing, and empathic helping, respectively), in which their prosocial behaviors (spontaneous and/or requested) towards the experimenter were observed. For these participants, 55 Dutch parents, all Indian parents and 75 Chinese parents also completed questionnaires on their values (self-enhancement and self-transcendence); socialization goals for their children (autonomous and relational goals); and parent socialization practices related to helping and sharing.
For prosocial behaviors, after controlling for age, binary logistic regressions showed that Chinese preschoolers were more likely to share on request than Dutch and Indian preschoolers, but there were no differences for spontaneous sharing, instrumental helping or empathic helping. In addition, ANOVA analyses showed no cultural differences for the percentage of treats shared, or the readiness of instrumental/empathic helping. Moreover, for parental values, goals and practices, ANOVA analyses showed that Dutch parents valued self-enhancement more strongly than both Indian and Chinese parents, and Indian parents valued self-transcendence more than Dutch and Chinese parents. In addition, Indian parents had stronger relational goals for their children than both Dutch and Chinese parents. Both Indian and Chinese parents used more practices to foster sharing than Dutch parents. Additionally, for the associations between parental values, goals and practices and prosocial behaviors, significant correlations were only found among the Indian sample. Specifically, parent’s value of self-enhancement was negatively associated with requested sharing, though a positive relationship existed between the level of autonomous socialization goals and the frequency of instrumental helping. Across all three cultures (i.e., the total sample), linear regression showed that parental socialization of helping practices was positively associated with children’s readiness to provide empathic helping.
In sum, our findings indicate that culture-specific pathways of parenting can help explain young children’s individual differences in prosocial behavior within cultures, but might not explain differences between cultures.

Authors

• Yue Song, Utrecht University
  Presenting Author

• Martine Broekhuizen, Utrecht University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Judith Semon Dubas, Utrecht University
  Non-Presenting Author