The Interaction Between Sustained Attention and Values Predicts Children’s Prosocial Behavior

• In Event: Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Topic - Moral Development

Abstract

Introduction. A body of evidence suggests that prosocial behavior among humans relies on automatic cognitive processes requiring little attentive effort (Lotz, 2015; Zaki & Mitchell, 2013). However, the automatic-prosociality effect shows variation between individuals and age ranges, and sometimes fails to replicate (Bouwmeester et al., 2017, Merkel & Lohse, 2019). Inconsistency in the literature may be explained by differences in people’s values: the abstract motivations that guide their lives (Schwartz, 1992). Specifically, people who are internally motivated towards prosociality may be inclined to act in such a manner, while people whose motivations stand in conflict with prosociality may not (Miles, 2015). The current study examined the moderating role of the value dimensions self-transcendence vs. self-enhancement (ST vs. SE) and openness-to-change vs. conservation (OP vs. CO; see Table 1) in the relationship between children’s sustained attention and prosociality.
Method. Participants were 162 Israeli children (51.2% girls) at eight to nine ages (M = 105.72 months, SD =5.16). We measured children’s responses in three tasks: (1) sustained attention was measured in a Go/No-Go task (Simpson & Riggs, 2006), asking children to respond to a pre-specified infrequent target, while withholding response to non-target stimuli; (2) values were measured using the Picture-Based Value Survey for Children (Döring et al., 2010, 2015), as children ranked value items according to their importance in their lives; and (3) in the Helping Task we measured children’s reaction to an experimenter who seemed to have accidentally dropped game pieces.
Results. In a linear regression analysis (see Table 1), no main effect for lack of sustained attention was found, but a significant positive main effect for ST vs. SE values on helping behavior. Furthermore, lack of sustained attention significantly interacted with both value dimensions (see Figure 1). Children attributing importance to ST vs. SE were more likely to help if their attention score was low, replicating recent findings in adults’ study (Miles, 2015). In addition, children valuing OP vs. CO were more likely to help if their attention score was low. Recent evidence shows that children aged nine to 12 years were tend to behave more prosocially if they ascribe importance to OP values (Benish-Weisman et al., 2019). The joint results from the studies suggest that toward the end of middle childhood, OP values may become an intuitive motivating factor for prosocial behavior.
This study is the first to examine the automatic-prosociality effect among children, across different types of values, using a direct attention measurement. Taken together, the findings suggest that the conflicting evidence in the literature may derive, in part, from individual differences in personal motivations. As sustained attention and values develop intensively during middle childhood (Betts et al., 2006; Cieciuch et al., 2016), our work has opened a window onto their dynamic association during a critical time of development.

Authors

• Kinneret Misgav, Tel Aviv University
  Presenting Author

• Reut Shachnai, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lior Abramson, Columbia University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ariel Knafo-Noam, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ella Daniel, Tel Aviv University
  Non-Presenting Author