Do young children and non-human primates care about other people’s needs?

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Why do young children and non-human primates help others in need? The motivation for prosocial behavior can be manifold (e.g., altruistic, affiliative) and is a topic of intense debate (e.g., Köster & Kärtner, 2019; Paulus, 2014; Warneken, 2018). The present symposium focuses on whether and under what circumstances alleviating the recipient’s need is at the forefront of early prosocial behavior. Young children’s need-based prosociality has hitherto been studied in a restricted set of circumstances, and consequentially, how children of diverse ages act on someone’s need for help is poorly understood.
The present symposium provides a unique window into the ontogenetic and phylogenetic foundations of need-based prosocial behavior by presenting research that examines different types of need (based on wealth, competence, emotions, instrumental need) across diverse populations (infants, preschoolers, school-aged children, and non-human primates).
The first talk addresses prosocial cognition and asks whether infants and non-human primates understand others’ need for help. The second talk addresses how the recipient’s incompetence affects children’s helping behavior. Talk three focuses on emotion-based need, and examines whether children share more with a robotic recipient that can feel versus an unfeeling robot. Last, talk four pits wealth-based need against friendship in order to understand whom children think others should share with and who they themselves share resources with.
Taken together, this symposium will elucidate whether young children and great apes care about other people’s needs in some circumstances (talk 1, 3, 4) and how it relates to early prosocial behavior (talk 2, 4).

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chair

• Jellie Sierksma, Utrecht University

Individual Presentations

• Developmental foundations of understanding others’ needs – Evidence from human infants across populations and great apes - Presenting Author: Moritz Köster, Freie Universität Berlin; Non-Presenting Author: Christopher Krupenye; Non-Presenting Author: Tess Fulcher, University of Chicago; Non-Presenting Author: Amanda Woodward, University of Chicago; Non-Presenting Author: Zanna Clay, Durham University

• Competence-based helping: Young children do not distribute help according to need - Presenting Author: Jellie Sierksma, Utrecht University; Non-Presenting Author: Kristin Shutts, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• You, robot? The role of anthropomorphic emotion attributions in children’s sharing with a robot - Presenting Author: Sari RR Nijssen, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen; Non-Presenting Author: Barbara Müller, Radboud Universiteit; Non-Presenting Author: Tibor Bosse; Non-Presenting Author: Markus Paulus, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

• Favoring the friend or the poor? Dissociations between preschoolers’ normative views and own resource distributions - Presenting Author: Natalie Christner, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; Non-Presenting Author: Monika Wörle, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; Non-Presenting Author: Markus Paulus, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München