The social roots of early helping behavior

• In Event: Social and cultural influences on early prosociality

Abstract

Basic elements of prosociality – (pro)social motivation, cognition, and prosocial behavior – emerge during the first and second year of life within social interaction. Beyond these individual inclinations, the developmental system is complemented by the way in which caregivers inform children’s experience and behavior, (e.g. by modeling, encouraging or praising prosocial responses). By structuring, caregivers integrate toddlers’ unrefined (pro)social sentiments and behavioral inclinations into coherent patterns, which co-constitutes early helping.
In Study 1 – a lab-based longitudinal study – we examined whether parental structuring (i.e., encouragement, modeling and praise) of toddlers’ prosocial engagement is not only associated with toddlers’ immediate helping behavior during joint interaction but has also generalized effects across time, thus leading to differential development, and across situations, such as when helping someone else. Behavioral data was assessed at 12, 15, 18, 21 and 24 months (N = 38 dyads from educated urban middle-class families in Germany). Three main findings emerged. First, when analyzing the effects of parental structuring on toddlers’ helping across developmental time (helping the parent three months later), we found a positive effect of modeling at 12 months and of praise at 15 months. This pattern suggests that an effective strategy to support toddlers’ development of prosocial engagement with a parent in recurrent tasks is to model target behavior around the age of emergence and then soon start praising prosocial accomplishments. Second, when analyzing the effect of parental structuring on toddlers’ helping across recipients, there were positive cross-sectional associations of both caregivers’ encouragement and praise during parent-child interactions with helping the experimenter between 12 and 18 months. Although this could be due to socialization, one cannot be sure about the directionality of effects. Instead, it is possible that toddlers’ general prosociality influences both parental structuring (e.g., caregivers offer more encouragement to more prosocial toddlers and have more opportunities to praise them for helping) and helping the experimenter. Third, when applying the strictest criterion, namely an effect of parental structuring that generalizes across both developmental time and recipients, we found that modeling at 18 months had an effect on toddlers’ helping toward an experimenter at 21 months. This may indicate that when caregivers use more pedagogical forms of child-directed communication, namely when they perform child-directed demonstrations of desirable target behavior, the demonstrations may be interpreted by the child as generic information that also applies outside the parent-child context.
In Study 2, we tested (at 18, 21, and 24 months within the same data assessment as in Study 1) whether – once engaged in a collaborative engagement (i.e., cleaning up together), toddlers would continue helping once the experimenter disengages from the task. Results showed that toddlers at 18 months were less likely to continue helping than 21 and 24 months. These findings support the proposal that there is a gradual shift away from a general interest in participating in social interaction and toward concern for the other and responsibly contributing to collaborative activities. The results provide new information about the role of parent social structuring in the development of prosocial behavior.

Authors

• Joscha Kärtner, University of Münser
  Presenting Author

• Marta Giner Torréns, University of Münster (Germany)
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nils Schuhmacher, University of Münster
  Non-Presenting Author