Modeling Prosocial Behavior Increases Helping in 16‐Month‐Olds

Schuhmacher, Nils; Köster, Moritz; Kärtner, Joscha

doi:10.1111/cdev.13054

Cited by 32 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Basic developmental processes, like infants' prosocial understanding of others' needs and their emerging motor and social abilities, join forces with their empathic concern (Hepach, et al, 2012), and affiliative processes (Cirelli, Einarson, & Trainor, 2014;Over & Carpenter, 2009) in the emergence of early helping behavior. These basic developments are, from early on, complemented by social learning processes (Dahl, 2015;Schuhmacher, Köster, & Kärtner, 2018) and culture-specific socialization experiences (Kärtner, 2018;Köster, Schuhmacher, & Kärtner, 2015;Köster, Cavalcante, Carvalho, Resende, & Kärtner, 2016). Thus, while infants' prosocial understanding may contribute to their helping behavior, infants may help out of different (or a blend of different) intentions and motives in different situations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From understanding others' needs to prosocial action: Motor and social abilities promote infants' helping

Köster

Itakura

Omori

et al. 2019

Developmental Science

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In the present study, we test the main hypothesis that infants' understanding of others' needs translates into helping behavior, when critical motor and social competencies have emerged, early in the second year. We assessed the understanding of others' needs in an eye-tracking paradigm and the helping behavior of 10-(n = 41) and 16-month-olds (n = 37). Furthermore, we assessed the motor and social abilities of 16-month-olds. Critically, while infants understood others' needs already at 10 months, fine motor and social interaction skills moderated the link between infants' prosocial understanding and helping behavior at 16 months. This provides first evidence that infants' helping behavior relates to their understanding of others' needs. Furthermore, we found that fine motor, gross motor, and social interaction skills predicted early helping behavior by themselves. These findings highlight that the emergence of infants' helping behavior is the result of a developmental system that includes infants' understanding of others' needs and also their motor and social competencies. The link between infants' understanding of others' needs and their early helpful actions provide further support for the prosocial nature of early helping behavior. K E Y W O R D Shelping behavior, motor development, social interaction, understanding others' needs

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From understanding others' needs to prosocial action: Motor and social abilities promote infants' helping

Köster

Itakura

Omori

et al. 2019

Developmental Science

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“…Among 13- and 14-month-olds, previous encouragement and praise made infants twice as likely to hand back the dropped object to the experimenter. Other research has provided further evidence about how caregivers contribute to the early development of infant helping (Pettygrove et al, 2013; Waugh et al, 2015), identifying mechanisms such as parents’ emotion talk (Brownell, Svetlova, Anderson, Nichols, & Drummond, 2013), synchrony and shared positive affect (Cirelli, Wan, & Trainor, 2014), and imitation (Schuhmacher, Köster, & Kärtner, 2018).…”

Section: Helping Develops Through Social Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Social Origins of Human Prosociality

Dahl

Brownell

2019

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

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From early in life, children help, comfort, and share with other people. Recent research has deepened scientific understanding of the development of prosociality—efforts to promote the welfare of others. In this article, we discuss two key insights about the emergence and early development of prosocial behavior, focusing on the development of helping. First, children’s motivations and capabilities for helping change in quality as well as quantity over the opening years of life. Specifically, helping begins in participatory activities without prosocial intent in the first year of life, becoming increasingly autonomous and motivated by prosocial intent over the second year. Second, helping emerges through bidirectional social interactions starting at birth: Caregivers and other individuals support the development of helping in a variety of ways, and young children play active roles that often influence caregiver behavior. The question now is not whether but how social interactions contribute to the development of prosocial behavior. Recent methodological and theoretical advances provide exciting avenues for future research on the social and emotional origins of human prosociality.

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“…There is now experimental evidence that infants understand individual needs, when they start to help others (Köster, Ohmer, Nguyen, & Kärtner, 2016) and also that their motivation to help is influenced by the way parents demonstrate helping behavior (Dahl et al, 2017), when others model helping behavior (Schuhmacher, Köster, & Kärtner, 2018), parenting practices of mothers (Torréns & Kärtner, 2017), and involvement of their children in daily shores . Parent and others behavior in such circumstances can thus effectively reinforce helpful behavior on children and encourage learning of prosocial norms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maternal socialization goals and the spontaneous prosocial behavior of children in rural contexts

Fonseca

Cavalcante

Kärtner

et al. 2018

Psicol. Refl. Crít.

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The purpose of this descriptive-correlational study was to investigate possible associations between maternal socialization goals and prosocial behavior (spontaneous helping) among children living in a rural context. This study involved 39 dyads of mothers, aged 17 to 48 years (M = 24.28 years, SD = 5.97), and their children, with a mean age of 24 months. The data collection included a Sociocultural Sociodemographic Characterization Questionnaire (SSCQ), a Socialization Goals Questionnaire (SGQ), and a Spontaneous Prosocial Behavior Task (SPBT). Most importantly, we found that the maternal socialization goal to "Learning to support others" exhibited a significant correlation (r = 0.40, p < 0.05) with the helping task performed by the children. This finding sustains the hypothesis that maternal goals, which emphasize the importance of their children in learning to help others, are correlated with an increased frequency of prosocial behavior in young children, around their second birthday.

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Modeling Prosocial Behavior Increases Helping in 16‐Month‐Olds

Cited by 32 publications

References 37 publications

From understanding others' needs to prosocial action: Motor and social abilities promote infants' helping

From understanding others' needs to prosocial action: Motor and social abilities promote infants' helping

The Social Origins of Human Prosociality

Maternal socialization goals and the spontaneous prosocial behavior of children in rural contexts

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