A Cross-Cultural Comparison of the Early Helping Behaviour in British and Ugandan Infants

• In Event: Parenting, family and moral development

Abstract

Children start to try to help others to achieve their goals early in their second year of life (e.g., Warneken & Tomasello, 2007). However, it remains unclear to what extent this is an innate behaviour and how much of it is established through socialisation processes. We have approached this question by investigating whether growing up in different cultures, and thus experiencing different social interactions and parenting practices, will lead to differences in children’s helping behaviours. Previous cross-cultural studies on helping have revealed mixed results so far, with some finding children from different cultural backgrounds help an experimenter at similar rates (e.g. Callaghan et al., 2011; Köster et al., 2016) and others finding significant cross-cultural differences (Giner Torréns & Kärtner, 2017).
The present study aimed to examine individual and cultural variation in early helping behaviours and whether maternal attitudes and practices might help to explain this variation. We tested 84 mother-infant-dyads: 39 living in rural Uganda (Budongo, Masindi, Uganda) and 45 living in or near a medium-sized British city (York, North Yorkshire, UK). First, we asked mothers to complete questionnaires concerning their infants’ early helping behaviours to assess their parenting practices and expectations about helping, when the children were 11- and 14-months old. Later, at 18-months, we measured the children’s performance in a standardised out-of-reach helping task with an experimenter, consisting of an experimental and control condition. In the experimental condition, the experimenter pretended to drop an object on the floor by accident and then unsuccessfully reached for it while giving a series of cues aimed at prompting the child to hand them the object. In the control condition, the experimenter purposefully dropped the object on the floor and then did not reach for it.
Subsequently, we coded the videos of these trials and identified children who helped the experimenter in the experimental condition (by either handing them the object or putting it on the table in front of them) but did not retrieve the object in the control condition. A preliminary analysis revealed that significantly more Ugandan infants (56%) helped exclusively in the experimental condition compared to British infants (29%; χ2(1) = 6.51, p = .011). In order to explore why Ugandan infants seem to be more likely to help an unfamiliar individual than infants in the UK, we will analyse the effect of maternal practices and attitudes towards the development of helping behaviour in infants on early helping behaviour. Furthermore, we will determine whether any relationship is mediated by cultural group. Taken together, we hope our findings will add to our understanding of the influence of cultural environment and socialisation processes on the emergence of early helping behaviour.

Authors

• Joanna Christiane Buryn-Weitzel, University of York
  Presenting Author

• Charlotte Ives, University of York
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ed Donnellan, University of Reading
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kirsty Emma Graham, University of York
  Non-Presenting Author

• Maegan Hoffman, University of York
  Non-Presenting Author

• Eve Holden, University of York
  Non-Presenting Author

• Michael Jurua, Budongo Field Station
  Non-Presenting Author

• Charlotte Victoria Knapper, University of York
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nicole Jasmine Lahiff, University of York
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sophie Marshall, University of York
  Non-Presenting Author

• Anna Nador, University of York
  Non-Presenting Author

• Claudia Wilke, University of York
  Non-Presenting Author

• Katie Elizabeth Slocombe, University of York
  Non-Presenting Author