Does helping make young children happy? The development of prosocial emotions underlying helping in early childhood.

• In Event: Poster Session 05
  In Poster Session: PS 05 Topic - Social, Emotional, Personality

Abstract

Considerable research suggests that the sophisticated early human tendency to engage in prosocial behaviours is intrinsically motivated and elicits positive emotions (Aknin et al., 2012; Hepach et al., 2012; Hepach et al., 2017; Warneken & Tomasello, 2008). The aim of this ongoing research project is to investigate the relationship between helping and positive emotions longitudinally. Across three time points, 3, 4, and 5-year-old children (N=170) participated in a series of helping tasks modelled after those reported by Svetlova et al. (2010). Offline coding of children’s responses was conducted to asses children’s: helping score (3 = helped right away, 2 = helped after cue, 3 = helped after direct prompt, 0 = did not help) and the happiness that they exhibited after helping (7-point-Likert-scale adapted from Aknin et al., 2012; 1 = no signs of happiness, 4 = moderate signs of happiness such as smiling, laughing, elevated posture and ‘warm-glow’, 7 = high signs of happiness such as jumping, laughing, verbal responses). While coding is ongoing, analyses will be conducted to test the following hypotheses. First, we expect that children who help spontaneously (i.e., receive a helping score of 3), will show higher levels of happiness relative to children who take longer to help. Second, we hypothesize that there will be differences between children’s happiness between the three types of helping tasks (i.e., instrumental, empathic, and altruistic helping). Specifically, we expect empathic and altruistic helping to elicit higher levels of happiness compared to instrumental helping. Lastly, children’s happiness scores should increase with development as helping behaviours become more sophisticated. Furthermore, we will examine whether children’s socio-cognitive development (i.e., ToM) and empathic concern (i.e., personal distress, comforting behaviour) account for individual differences in children’s helping scores and happiness ratings. To our knowledge, this study is the first to explore prosocial emotions underlying helping from a longitudinal perspective and thus, will provide novel insights into the proximate mechanisms underlying prosocial development.

Group Authors

Presenting Author Details:
Sina Gibhardt, School of Psychology, University of Auckland, New Zealand, sgib591@aucklanduni.ac.nz

Other Author Details:
Annette M. E. Henderson, School of Psychology, University of Auckland, New Zealand, a.henderson@auckland.ac.nz

Authors

• Sina Gibhardt, University of Auckland
  Presenting Author

• Annette M. E. Henderson, University of Auckland
  Non-Presenting Author