Minimal and real-world social categories shape expectations of prosocial behavior across development

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Prosocial behavior is a foundation of human connection. The present symposium illuminates new ways in which social groups – minimal or real-world – shape children’s expectations of prosociality. First, we explore how children’s developing intuitions about prosociality vary as a function of minimal group membership. Paper 1 examines expectations of empathy for a minimal ingroup vs. outgroup: Children and adults expected more empathy within than between groups; strikingly, when the ingroup and outgroup were said to dislike each other, children and adults expected a type of reverse-empathy: positive emotion in response to the outgroup’s misfortune. Paper 2 asks how the physical proximity and cultural similarity between two groups shape beliefs about whether one group is obligated to help the other: Adults were more parochial than children, reporting stronger obligation to help close and similar groups. Second, we explore how an important real-world group, gender, shapes children’s expectations of prosocial behavior. While past work finds that young children help regardless of gender, the present papers explore how expectations of helping become gendered. Paper 3 explores a potential downside of helping: Children expected one social group (girls) to help more than another (boys), even at a cost to themselves. Finally, Paper 4 explores how gender shapes the perceived value of prosocial behavior: Adults devalued the types of prosociality associated with girls (e.g., emotional and cognitive labor). Together, these papers show how minimal and real-world group memberships shape expectations of prosociality, sometimes to the detriment of certain groups (e.g., outgroup members, girls).

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chairs

• Sophie Arnold, New York University

• Mia Radovanovic, University of Toronto

Individual Presentations

• Early developing expectations of intergroup empathy bias - Presenting Author: Rodney Tompkins, University of California, Santa Barbara; Katherine Vasquez, University of Chicago; Emily Rachel Gonsier Gerdin, Yale University; Yarrow C Dunham, Yale University; Zoe Liberman, University of California - Santa Barbara

• How cultural and physical distance shape children’s obligation judgments about prosocial behavior - Presenting Author: Julia Marshall, Boston College; Matti Wilks, University of Edinburgh

• Children's gendered expectations of helping - Presenting Author: Sophie Arnold, New York University; Katharina Block, New York University; Andrei Cimpian, New York University

• Gendered expectations for children’s emotional, cognitive, and physical helping - Presenting Author: Mia Radovanovic, University of Toronto; Tim Wei-Ting Chao, University of Toronto; Mahima Tirunelveli Santhakumar, University of Toronto; Nila Curtosi, University of Toronto; Jessica A Sommerville, University of Toronto