Resilience and Individual Differences in Early Prosocial Development (Week 4, Lecture 2)

Eisenberg’s Definition - Limitations

child must have prerequisite foundational skills developed:-

• motor development - share/engage with another to comfort them

• language development - voice comfort/encouragement

Warneken & Tomasello (2006)

prosocial behaviour = ancient evolutionary instinct seen in close human relatives.

14 months → engage in prosocial behaviour - chimps help similarly.

argue children have instinct to help when see someone needs it.

Warneken & Tomasello (2009)

young children engage in spontaneous helping even at cost to themselves (stop playing to help).

Warneken & Tomasello (2008; 2013)

parental presence/physical rewards NO EFFECT on rate of prosocial behaviours. over time rewards DECREASE rates of helping (20 mths).

prosocial behaviour = spontaneous, common, altruistic. evidence against Piaget.

Spinrad & Stifer (2006)

18mths w/ baby doll, mother, or researcher.

partner shows distress → measure signs of empathic distress and prosocial comforting.

results = stable in personal distress across conditions. empathic distress predicts later prosocial comforting.

Individual Differences (Liew et al., 2011)

individual differences in fearfulness and self-regulation in predicting prosocial behaviour.

longitudinal - 18mths → 7 years.

respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) physiological marker for self-regulation. higher = better coping.

Liew et al. (2011) - Results

high temperamental fear/low regulation predicts high personal distress + low helping. use avoidance strats instead of prosocial behaviours.

RSA resting rate positively predicts helping.

Role of Parenting - Spinrad et al. (1999)

child-centred emotionally available parenting positively associated with prosocial behaviour.

authoritative parenting → address unwanted behaviours but not punitive/doesn’t distress child.

Taylor, Eisenberg & Spinrad (2015) - Parenting

longitudinal - measured ages 3-7 yrs at 3 points.

measure RSA, effortful control, sympathy (observational reports).

parenting directly associated with effortful control → directly associated with prosocial behaviour (sympathy).

Cross-Cultural Studies (Callaghan & Corbit, 2018)

literature review - prosocial behaviour ubiquitous + early emerging.

across cultures - little variation in low-cost prosociality (sharing, helping).

more variations in higher cost → more stable emerging in middle childhood.

Grossman (2018) - Concern

concern for others guides prosocial behaviour early on.

use of marker tasks relying on infant responses to seeing others in distress → capture variability of responses linked to concern.

Svetlova et al. (2010)

younger → ready/able to help in action-based tasks. empathic helping difficult, altruistic most difficult.

2nd year → no longer rely on action understanding/explicit communication. can understand others’ emotions from subtle cues.