Preschoolers’ Judgments about Prosocial Actions Across Contexts

• In Event: 3-033 - Variability in Prosocial Behaviors: Social and Motivational Sources Across Cultures

Integrative Statement

Evaluations are central to prosocial actions. Prosocial actions promote the welfare of another, for instance by helping, comforting, or sharing a resource. While children begin to help and share with others in the first year of life, explicit judgments of right and wrong based on evaluative considerations are not evident until later (Dahl & Paulus, 2018). Once acquired, evaluations of prosociality can inform children’s own actions and their reactions to the prosocial efforts of others (Martin, Lin, & Olson, 2016; Paulus, Nöth, & Wörle, 2018). Most of past research on judgments and reasoning about prosocial actions has focused on children around eight years or more (e.g. Miller, Bersoff, & Harwood, 1990; Nucci, Turiel, & Roded, 2017). By these older ages, children make nuanced judgments about when a prosocial action is good, when it is obligatory, and when it is wrong.
The present research investigated judgments and reasoning about prosocial actions among preschoolers (Eisenberg, Lennon, & Roth, 1983). At this age, social judgments and reasoning undergo major developments (Smetana, 2013). This study investigated judgments and reasoning about whether an agent should act prosocially, and whether it was obligatory to act prosocially.
Three- to five-year-olds (M=4.3 years, N=49) were interviewed about situations in which a helper had the option of promoting the welfare of a recipient, for instance by sharing food or retrieving an object. Pairs of situations differed in the cost to the agent, benefit to the recipient, relationship between agent and recipient, and permissibility of the recipient’s goal. For comparison, researchers also interviewed 56 adults.
Preschoolers’ judgments about whether the agent should act prosocially varied by situation type, D(5)=25.60, p<.001 (Figure 1). While participants typically said the agent should help, they were less likely to say so when the recipient was pursuing an impermissible goal (stealing). Justifications varied systematically with features of the situations. Girls were more likely than boys to say the agent should help, D(1)=6.07, p=.014. Across conditions, 72% of children viewed the prosocial act as obligatory, and most thought it would be okay to act prosocially even if there was a rule prohibiting it. We will also report data on children’s judgments about their own experiences with helping.
Adults showed similar patterns of judgments, but differentiated more among situations (Figure 2): Adults were most likely to say that the agent should help when the act had low cost to the agent and high benefit to the recipient, when there was a family relationship between agent, or recipient, and when the goal of the recipient was permissible, D(5)=130.69, p<.001. Adults rarely viewed helping as obligatory.
This study is among the first to examine explicit judgments and reasoning about prosocial actions among preschoolers. Preschoolers overall judged helping positively, and viewed it as obligatory in most cases. Still, their judgments and reasoning showed sensitivity to the unique features of each situation. Additional research is needed to investigate how young children’s judgments and reasoning about prosocial acts relate to their own decisions about whether to help, comfort, or share with others.

Authors

• Rebekkah Lauren Gross, University of California, Santa Cruz
  Presenting Author

• Catherine Siefert, University of California, Santa Cruz
  Non-Presenting Author

• Abha Sharma, University of California, Santa Cruz
  Non-Presenting Author

• Charles Baxley, University of California, Santa Cruz
  Non-Presenting Author

• Audun Dahl, University of California Santa Cruz
  Non-Presenting Author