Prosocial Behaviour and Moral Development Notes

Define Morality: Understanding concepts of right and wrong as well as the underlying reasons for moral and immoral actions.
Identify and Describe Four Categories of Prosocial Behaviour: Helping, sharing, cooperating, and comforting.
Describe the Development of Prosocial Behaviour in Infancy and Childhood: Include evidence-based understanding of these behaviors developmentally.

Understanding: Recognition of right and wrong and comprehension of moral reasoning.
Acting Morally: Engaging in actions that align with moral principles.
Emotional Experience: Emotions like pride and shame, and the capacity for empathy associated with moral actions.

Definition: Engaging in voluntary actions intended to benefit others.
Key Actions:
- Helping: Assisting individuals in need.
- Sharing: Dividing resources with others.
- Cooperating: Working together towards a common goal.
- Comforting: Providing emotional support, particularly empathetic help.

Evidence of basic understanding of prosocial behavior appears in the first two years of life. The concept of joint action emerges between 10 - 14 months (Citations: Henderson, Wang, Matz, & Woodward, 2013; Henderson & Woodward, 2011).
Measuring Understanding: Utilization of the habituation paradigm to assess how infants recognize cooperation (e.g., viewing a block as a shared goal).
Instrumental Helping: Begins around 14 months, progressing from simple to more complex goals, like reaching for objects.
Early Sharing: By 18 - 24 months, infants share resources if they have worked together and show enjoyment in sharing their food.
Cooperation: At 14 months, children can engage in cooperative activities with adults, indicating a rudimentary understanding.
Comforting: Signs of concern and comfort towards familiar others appear before the first birthday, solidifying around 2.5 years.

Experimental Evidence: Svetlova, Nichols, & Brownell (2010) conducted studies with children aged 18 and 30 months to explore different scenarios of helping, comforting, and altruistic behavior.
Measuring Responses: Cues from children such as verbal requests and gestures correlate with helping scores, indicating spontaneous prosociality.
Developmental Trends: Helping becomes more spontaneous with age. Children learn to recognize needs and emotions, influencing their helping behavior.
School-Aged Children: Increases in discerning sharing behaviors, with preferences exhibited between peers, and an increased understanding of the benefits of helping.
Social Dynamics: Older children less likely to share with those they dislike and more inclined to help strangers.

Antisocial Behaviour: Not every child acts morally despite understanding morality. Traits such as callousness and manipulativeness may develop, alongside conditions like conduct disorder characterized by chronic antisocial behaviors.
Emotional and Neurological Development: Variabilities in empathy and guilt indicate discrepancies in moral cognition and emotional recognition, often linked to delayed brain maturation.

Development of prosocial abilities correlates with improvements in cognitive, emotional, and social skills from infancy to childhood, shaping moral understanding and actions.