The Role of Individual and Situational Factors in Children’s and Adolescents’ Prosocial Judgments

• In Event: Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Topic - Moral Development

Abstract

Occasionally choosing not to help others is an inevitable social experience. When evaluating the desirability and obligatoriness of prosocial action, children’s judgments may be linked to individual differences in levels of empathy, perspective taking, and prosocial self-image, as well as to contextual factors such as costs of helping or intensity of need (Kahn, 1992; Sierksma et al., 2014). These judgments may also vary across situations that require helping, sharing, and comforting (e.g., Jackson & Tisak, 2001); nevertheless, the differences between types of prosociality have been overlooked (Dunfield & Kuhlmeier, 2013). Moreover, prosocial judgments may evolve with increasing age as children become more skilled in evaluating multiple aspects of social situations.
The aim of this study is to understand how individual differences and situational factors are related to children’ and adolescents’ prosocial judgments. Eighty-four participants will be recruited online across Canada, divided into groups of 9- and 14-year-olds. Data collection is in progress; 40 participants have completed the study over two months. In an online session, participants respond to six hypothetical stories involving a prosocial opportunity, wherein one child (recipient) needs to be helped, shared with, or comforted and another child (actor) needs to decide whether to act prosocially. Acting prosocially is costly in all stories, but the intensity of the recipient’s need is manipulated. Participants will evaluate desirability/undesirability and obligatoriness/impermissibility of acting prosocially. Individual differences in perspective-taking ability (Dumontheil et al., 2010), empathy (Bryant, 1982), prosocial self-image (Jordan et al., 2015), and unmitigated agency and communion (Fritz & Helgeson, 1998; Spence et al., 1979) will also be assessed.
To test whether contextual factors influence children’s judgments of obligatoriness and impermissibility of prosocial action, we will run two mixed-model ANOVAs with intensity of recipient’s need (high, low) and type of prosociality (helping, sharing, comforting) as within-subject factors, age as between-subject factor, and prosocial judgments (obligatoriness, impermissibility) as dependent variables. It is expected that high need/high cost prosociality will be more judged as desirable-obligatory, whereas low need/high cost prosociality will be more evaluated as undesirable-permissible. Since helping is typically considered to be a moral behavior (Janoff-Bulman et al., 2009), it is expected to be evaluated as desirable-obligatory, whereas sharing and comforting are more likely to be evaluated as desirable-not obligatory or undesirable-permissible. Last, we expect that 9-year-olds will evaluate all types of prosociality as desirable-obligatory, whereas 14-year-olds’ prosocial judgments will vary based on types of prosociality and contextual factors.
In addition, we will run a series of two multiple regression analyses to test whether individual differences (empathy, perspective taking, prosocial self-image, and unmitigated communion/agency) predict prosocial judgments (obligatoriness, impermissibility) after accounting for age. It is expected that high levels of empathy, unmitigated communion and prosocial self-image, as well as low levels of perspective taking and unmitigated agency will be linked to evaluations of prosocial actions as desirable-obligatory.
Examining the role that individual and situational factors play in framing evaluations of prosocial situations will highlight the multifaceted nature of prosocial situations. Implications for parents, educators, and practitioners will be discussed.

Authors

• Nasim Tavassoli, Concordia University
  Presenting Author

• Holly E Recchia, Concordia University
  Non-Presenting Author