14.2 Prosocial Behavior

Prosocial behavior: voluntary behavior intended to benefit another, such as helping, sharing with, and comforting others 

The Development of Prosocial Behavior 

• Origins rooted in the capacity to feel empathy and sympathy

1. Empathy: an emotional response to another’s emotional state or condition that reflects the other person’s state or condition

2. Sympathy: feeling of concern for another in response to the other’s emotional state or condition

• What distinguishes the two, is the element of concern

• Feel empathy/sympathy by the second year of life 

• To express them, children must be able to take the perspectives of others

• Children have some ability to understand others’ perspective much earlier

14 months 

• Become emotionally distressed when they see other people who are upset and express verbal/nonverbal concern for adult who has been hurt 

18-25 months 

• Toddler in laboratory studies sometimes share a personal object with an adult whom they have seen being harmed by another

• More likely to try to comfort someone who is upset than to become upset themselves, indicating that they know who it is that is suffering 

2-4 years 

• Some types of prosocial behaviors increase, while other decrease 

• 3-4 much more likely than 2 to provide assistance/verbal reassurance 

Young children may not be able to act on their feelings of sympathy when others are distressed until 3, in part because that is the age they begin to understand social norms 

Cooperation 

• May be driven by sympathy but also be driven by a child’s sense of fairness 

• Able to cooperate with another child/adult to reach a goal the would benefit them both as early as 14 months 

• Evolved especially in humans 

• Age through middle childhood to adolescence, their increasingly higher levels of moral reasoning and perspective-taking ability lead to accompanying increases in how often they engage in prosocial behaviors

The Origins of Individual Differences in Prosocial Behavior 

• Consistent theme – individual differences 

Biological Factors 

• Proposed humans are biologically predisposed to be prosocial 

• Because collaboration in foraging food and repelling enemies ensured survival 

• People who help other are more likely than less helpful people to be assisted when they themselves are in need and, thus, are more likely to survive and reproduce 

• Assisting those whom they share genes increases the likelihood that those genes will be passed on to the next generation 

• Pertain to the human species as a whole and do not explain individuals differences in empathy, sympathy and prosocial behavior 

Genetic factors do contribute to individual differences in these characteristics    

• Twins’ reports of their own empathy and prosocial behavior are considerably more similar for identical twins than for fraternal twins 

• Role of genetic factors in the children’s prosocial concerns for others and in their prosocial behavior increases with age 

• Identified specific genes that might contribute to individual differences in prosocial tendencies 

• Certain genes are associated with individual differences in oxytocin 

How else might genetic factors affect empathy, sympathy and prosocial behavior?

• Differences in temperament – differences in ability to regulate emotion are related to their empathy and sympathy 

• Regulation is also related to children’s theory of mind and theory of mind predicts children’s prosocial behavior 

• The effect of heredity on sympathy and prosocial behavior might involve individual differences in social cognition as well as temperament 

The Socialization of Prosocial Behavior

• Primary environmental influences – socialization in family – three ways parents socialize prosocial behavior 

1. Modeling and teaching prosocial behavior

2. Arranging opportunities for children to engage in prosocial behavior 

3. Disciplining children and eliciting prosocial behavior from them

• Also communicate and reinforce cultural beliefs about the value of prosocial behavior

Modeling and the communication of values 

• Children tend to imitate other people’s helping and sharing behavior, including even that of strangers 

• Likely to imitate the prosocial behavior of adults with whom they have a positive relationship

• This may help explain the fact that parents and children tend to be similar in their levels of prosocial behavior, although heredity may also contribute to the similarly between parent and child in sympathy and helpfulness 

• The values parents convey to their children may influence not only whether children are prosocial but also toward whom they are prosocial 

• Parents to teach their children prosocial values and behaviors is to have discussions with them that appeal to their ability to sympathize

Opportunities for prosocial activities 

• Providing opportunities to engage in helpful activities can increase their willingness to take on prosocial tasks at a later time 

• Household tasks 

• Voluntary community service 

• Service learning 

• May also give children and adolescents opportunities to take others’ perspectives, to increase their confidence that they are competent to assist others, and to experience emotional rewards for helping 

• Mandatory school-based service activities have been associated with future prosocial values

Discipline and parenting style 

• High levels – associated with constructive and supportive parenting

• Parents involved/close with children – higher in sympathy and regulation – predicts higher levels of prosocial behavior

• Not only might supportive, authoritative parenting promote sympathy and prosocial behavior, but prosocial, sympathetic children might also solicit more support from their parents 

• If children are regularly punished for failing to engage in prosocial behavior, they may start to believe that the reason for helping others is primarily to avoid punishment 

• If children are given material rewards for prosocial behaviors, they may come to believe that they helped solely for the rewards and, thus, may be less motivated to help when no rewards are offered 

• Particularly likely to foster children’s voluntary prosocial behavior is discipline that involves reasoning 

• True when the reasoning points out the consequences of the child’s behavior for others and encourages perspectives taking 

• Also encourages sympathy for others and provides guidelines children can refer to in future situations 

• Children tend to be more prosocial when their parents are not only warm and supportive but also when they model prosocial behavior, include reasoning and references to moral values and responsibilities in their discipline, and expose their children to prosocial models and activities 

Peer influences 

• Relationships with other children are another key way that children learn and particles moral principles

• Translates into prosocial behavior

• Pairs that has the highest levels of moral reasoning also were most successful at resolving conflict 

Interventions      

• Research does not allow firm conclusions about cause-and-effect relations 

• Some school interventions have been effective at promoting prosocial behavior in children, so environmental factors must contribute to its development 

• The research underlying such interventions indicates that experience in helping and cooperating with others, exposure to prosocial values and behaviors, and adults’ use of reasoning in discipline contribute to the development of prosocial behavior