Little Children's Participation in the Work of Adults, a Nascent Prosocial Behavior

Rheingold, Harriet L.

doi:10.2307/1129643

Cited by 210 publications

(152 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…In the first experiment, Warneken and Tomasello (2006) built on earlier results by Rheingold (1982) and presented 18-month-olds with 10 scenarios involving a male experimenter; each scenario had an experimental version where the experimenter required help (e.g., he accidentally dropped a marker on the floor and unsuccessfully reached for it) and a control version where he did not (e.g., he deliberately threw the marker on the floor and did not reach for it). The scenarios were grouped into four categories: objects out of reach, as in the preceding example; obstacles (e.g., the experimenter could not open the doors of a cabinet because his hands were full); failed attempts (e.g., the experimenter placed a book on top of a stack, but the book slipped); and misconceived attempts (e.g., the experimenter used a small instead of a large opening to retrieve an object from a box).…”

Section: Infants As Helpersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychological and sociomoral reasoning in infancy.

Baillargeon¹,

Scott²,

He³

et al. 2015

APA Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 1: Attitudes and Social Cognition.

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IntroductionConsider the following scene: A man wearing a backpack is pacing leisurely back and forth in a large airport room. As he strolls, he occasionally crosses his arms, twirls the dangling straps of his backpack, or stuffs his hands in his pant pockets. At one point, he sits down, takes off his backpack, and removes from it a bag filled with assorted gummy bears; as he peers intently inside the bag, he selects and eats, one at a time, five red gummy bears.As adults, we would have no difficulty interpreting the man's actions. We might view his initial actions-pacing, crossing his arms, and so on-as intentional (as opposed to accidental) though not as directed toward any particular goal. In contrast, we might perceive his subsequent actions-removing the bag of gummy bears from his backpack and eating five red ones in succession-as both intentional and goal-directed. In analyzing these actions, we might build an explanation that attributes to the man a causally coherent set of motivational and epistemic mental states: He wants to eat gummy bears, he is particularly fond of red ones, and so when he spies one in the bag, he removes it and eats it.Next, consider a new scene: As the man is happily chewing on red gummy bears, he notices a second man approaching who is carrying two heavy suitcases. At this point, our scene might unfold according to different scenarios. In one, the first man greets the second man, offers to carry one of the suitcases, and holds out his bag of gummy bears. In another scenario, the first man continues to watch the second man but makes no move to approach him. In yet another scenario, the first man sticks out a leg to trip the second man, causing him to fall heavily.As adults, we would interpret and evaluate the first man's actions in the three scenarios very differently. In the first scenario, we might infer that the two men have a social group in common: They might be friends, coworkers, or relatives, for example. In the second scenario, we 3 would conclude that the two men are strangers. In both the first and second scenarios, we would view the first man's behavior as acceptable: Offering help and sharing food are expected prosocial behaviors in interactions with ingroup, but not outgroup, individuals. In contrast, the first man's behavior in the third scenario would seem to us beyond the pale: Unprovoked harmful actions, even against outgroup individuals, are generally viewed as unacceptable. We would categorize the first man as an antisocial lout, and we might file away distinctive characteristics as possible markers of a social group to be avoided in the future.Our discussion of the two scenes above illustrates the rich analyses that adults spontaneously engage in when watching others act. What are the developmental origins of these interpretations? Over the past 25 years, there has been a great deal of research on social cognition in infancy. This research can be roughly organized into two sets of questions that map neatly onto the two scenes above. First, when watching an agen...

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Section: Infants As Helpersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychological and sociomoral reasoning in infancy.

Baillargeon¹,

Scott²,

He³

et al. 2015

APA Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 1: Attitudes and Social Cognition.

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show abstract

“…Thus, young children who exhibit spontaneous instrumental helping behavior may do so at least in part because they like engaging in joint actions and are motivated to do so (Rheingold et al 1982;Svetlova et al 2010;Paulus and Moore 2012 1 ), i.e. not because of any benefit that their contribution brings to anyone else.…”

Section: A Preference For Joint Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Goal Slippage: A Mechanism for Spontaneous Instrumental Helping in Infancy?

Michael

Székely²

2017

Topoi

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“…Even schooling is not an excuse not to work... ' (cited in Woodhead 1998c) Part of the problem is that even where children are engaged in work activities in the West, the dominant construction of childhood as work-free means that these are relabelled as play or learning or taking social responsibility. Rheingold (1982) drew attention to this issue in her study of US toddlers helping their mothers carry-out domestic chores: "All the children, even those as young as 18 months of age, promptly and for the most part without direction participated in some everyday housekeeping tasks performed by adults...." (Rheingold, 1982, p122).…”

Section: Work In Child Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a global paradigm for research into early childhood education

Woodhead

1999

European Early Childhood Education Research Journal

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Little Children's Participation in the Work of Adults, a Nascent Prosocial Behavior

Cited by 210 publications

References 7 publications

Psychological and sociomoral reasoning in infancy.

Psychological and sociomoral reasoning in infancy.

Goal Slippage: A Mechanism for Spontaneous Instrumental Helping in Infancy?

Towards a global paradigm for research into early childhood education

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