Examining the influence of shyness on children’s helping and comforting behaviour

Abstract

IntroductionShy children, who tend to feel anxious around others and withdraw from social interactions, are found to be less prosocial than their not-shy peers in some studies, though not in others. To examine the contexts in which shy children may be more or less likely to engage in prosocial behaviour, we compared children’s willingness and ability to intervene during in-person tasks that differed in socialengagement demands and complexity, factors that have been conflated in past research.MethodsWe presented 42, 3.5- to 4.5-year-old children with prosocial problems that varied, in a 2 x 2 within-subjects design, by the type of intervention required (i.e., simple helping or complex comforting) and the source of the problem (i.e., social: within the experimenter’s personal space; or object: a target object distanced from her).ResultsMost of the children acted prosocially, with little prompting, in the two helping tasks and in the object-centered comforting task. In contrast, fewer than half of the children acted prosocially in the social-centered comforting task. Shyer children were not less likely to intervene in any of the four tasks, but they were slower to intervene in the object-centred comforting task, in which the experimenter was upset about a broken toy.DiscussionThus, providing social-centered comfort to a recently-introduced adult is challenging for young children, regardless of shyness, though shy children do show hesitancy with object-centered comforting. Further, these findings provide insights into the methodological challenges of disentangling children’s prosocial motivation and understanding, and we propose solutions to these challenges for future research.

Revisiting associations between behavioral inhibition/shyness and social competence in young Chinese children: Sociohistorical imprint on three samples.

“…Because inhibited/shy children share a similar physiological, neural, and cognitive profiles with those who have social anxiety (Pérez-Edgar & Guyer, 2014), inhibited/shy children may find it difficult to regulate their overplayed physiological systems (Kagan et al, 1988) and overcome their attention biases to threat (e.g., negative evaluations from others; Rubin et al, 2009). Therefore, approaching others and engaging in prosocial acts may be arduous for these children who are physiologically underprepared for interacting with others (see Karasewich et al, 2023).…”

“…Of particular relevance is that inhibited/shy children may find it relatively challenging to take the lead in the interactions with these socially competent partners, especially unfamiliar adults. Thus, our findings may not be applied to the associations with social competence outcomes assessed in the presence of familiar peers or when interpersonal interactions are not necessary (Karasewich et al, 2023). Third, the sociodemographic backgrounds are somehow alike across our three samples (i.e., children from highly educated middle-class families).…”