Individual differences in toddlers' social understanding and prosocial behavior: disposition or socialization?

Encouraging a Peer in Need: The Impacts of Social Anxiety and Peer Familiarity

Extant research has produced conflicting findings regarding the link between social fearfulness and prosocial behavior, with some studies reporting negative relations and others reporting null effects. Furthermore, these studies have focused predominantly on toddlerhood, and few have examined prosociality between peers. The present study investigated whether the link between social anxiety and a prosocial behavior (i.e., providing encouragement) varied depending on interpersonal and situational factors (i.e., one's familiarity with a peer, the level of support sought by a peer, respectively). We tested this question using a multimethod approach, which included an ecologically valid stress inducing task and dyadic design with a sample of 9- to 10-year-olds (N = 447). Results revealed that social anxiety was related negatively to providing encouragement among familiar and unfamiliar dyads. In familiar dyads, however, this main effect was qualified by an interaction with the level of support sought by one's peer. Compared to those low in social anxiety, children high in social anxiety provided relatively less encouragement in response to higher levels of support seeking from their peers. The findings are considered in relation to theorizing regarding the effect of overarousal on children's prosocial behavior.

Will exposure to different consequences of prosocial behavior always lead to subsequent prosocial behavior among adolescents: An experimental study of short videos

The relationship between exposure to prosocial media content and prosocial behavior has been extensively explored. However, previous studies mainly explore the effect of prosocial media content exposure by comparing an individual’s exposure to the different types of content (i.e., prosocial content or neutral content), and generally focus on traditional media and video games, with less attention given to the increasingly popular new media platforms. In this study, we explored new dimensions by considering individuals’ exposure to different consequences of the same prosocial behavior (i.e., reward, punishment, or no consequences) in the context of short videos. Drawing upon Social Cognitive Theory and the General Learning Model, this experimental study identified the effect of such exposure on subsequent prosocial behavior among adolescents. We found that compared to the no consequences group, exposure to the reward consequence did not significantly predict moral elevation and subsequent prosocial behavior. Meanwhile, exposure to the punishment consequence had a significantly negative effect on subsequent prosocial behavior via moral elevation. Furthermore, the results revealed that empathy moderated the relationship between moral elevation and prosocial behavior, and moral elevation only positively predicted prosocial behavior among those with low empathy. Theoretically, this study deepens our understanding of the impact of exposure to different consequences of prosocial behavior on adolescents’ subsequent prosocial behavior, and highlights the importance of moral elevation and empathy to understand the underlying mechanism. The study also provides some practical implications for parents and practitioners to nurture prosocial behavior among adolescents.

Temperament and psychopathology: The "community" to which you belong matters

We utilized a community detection approach to longitudinally (a) identify distinct groups of children with common temperament profiles in infancy and at 2 and 3 years of age and (b) determine whether co-occurrence of certain temperament traits may be early predictors of internalizing problems at 5 years of age. Seven hundred and seventy-four infants (360 girls; 88.6% White, 9.8% Hispanic, and 1.6% other races) were recruited from the Boston area. Data collection spanned from 2012 to 2021. The analysis yielded three distinct groups of children with different temperament traits and was associated with significant variation in levels of internalizing symptoms and anxiety diagnosis rate. Our findings suggest that stable temperament "communities" can be detected in early childhood and may predict risk for psychopathology later in life.

Prosocial Behavior in Toddlerhood: The Contribution of Emotion Knowledge, Theory of Mind, and Language Ability

While scholars have previously investigated the respective contributions of emotional knowledge and language ability to toddlers' prosociality, no studies to date have featured a battery of multiple direct measures assessing both of these abilities plus theory of mind on the one hand, and prosocial behavior on the other hand. In contrast, we conducted the present cross-sectional study with a view to evaluating the unique contributions of each of these three social cognition variables as antecedents of prosocial conduct during toddlerhood, measuring them via a series of individually administered standardized tasks. Furthermore, given that the existing literature documents mixed gender effects, we also set out to explore the role of gender in toddlers' prosociality. Finally, we also controlled for any effects of age on the patterns of association among the key variables. Participants were 127 children aged between 24 and 36 months (M = 29.2 months; SD = 3.5). We identified significant correlations among the variables under study. In addition, stepwise multiple regression analysis suggested that each of the social cognition (SC) abilities – i.e., emotion knowledge, theory of mind, and language - made a unique contribution to explaining variance in prosocial behaviors (PB). These findings show that SC is already associated with PB in toddlerhood and suggest the importance of fostering social cognition competence from the early years, with a view to increasing children's propensity to engage in prosocial conduct.

Neural activation associated with outgroup helping in adolescent rats

Prosocial behavior, helping others in need in particular, occurs preferentially in response to the perceived distress of one's own group members or ingroup. To investigate the development of ingroup bias, neural activity during a helping test was analyzed in adolescent and adult rats. Although adults selectively released trapped ingroup members, adolescent rats helped both ingroup and outgroup members, suggesting that ingroup bias emerges in adulthood. Analysis of brain-wide neural activity, indexed by expression of the early-immediate gene c-Fos, revealed increased activity for ingroup members across a broad set of regions previously associated with empathy. Adolescents showed reduced hippocampal and insular activity and increased orbitofrontal cortex activity compared to adults. Non-helper adolescents demonstrated increased amygdala connectivity. These findings demonstrate that biases for group-dependent prosocial behavior develop with age in rats and suggest that specific brain regions contribute to prosocial selectivity, pointing to possible targets for the functional modulation of ingroup bias.

Beliefs about the factors that motivate prosocial sentiments among people in the privileged class of Pakistan during the COVID-19 pandemic

Drawing upon the theories of empathy-altruism and planned behavior, this study investigated beliefs about the factors that motivate prosocial sentiments among people in the privileged class of Pakistan during the COVID-19 pandemic. In-depth interviews were conducted with 31 participants who were deemed to be members of the privileged class within the class system of Pakistan. The results revealed nine themes including social interaction, peer influence, role models, collectivism, vicarious emotions, religiosity, capability, volition, and education.

Vygotskian Business Ethics: The Influence of Peers on Moral Reasoning in Business Ethics Education

The Russian developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky provides important theoretical underpinnings for an alternative to business ethics pedagogy. Although Vygotsky's constructivist approach has been applied to other disciplines, such as cognitive development, moral development, and network analysis and learning, its application to business ethics education is virtually nonexistent. Vygotsky's focus on language and peer influence provides a novel approach to ethics education. Although many business ethics instructors already use group discussion in their classes, we provide evidence that will reinforce such techniques as a crucial pedagogical method. This study is an exploratory application of Vygotsky's developmental theory to business ethics education. Data were gathered in business ethics and management courses, with experimental and control groups, and analyzed using the Defining Issues Test and thematic-coded journal entries. Results indicated that discussions created a zone of proximal development improving the moral reasoning for most students giving them multiple perspectives and providing support to engage in deliberations and peer dialogue when discussing ethical frameworks, ethical scenarios, and ethical decision making.

Prosocial and Aggressive Behavior: A Longitudinal Study

Developmental theorists have made strong claims about the fundamental prosocial or aggressive nature of the human infant. However, only rarely have prosocial behavior and aggression been studied together in the same sample. We charted the parallel development of both behaviors from infancy to childhood in a British community sample, using a two-construct, multimethod longitudinal design. Data were drawn from the Cardiff Child Development Study (CCDS), a prospective longitudinal study of a volunteer sample of parents and their firstborn children. A sample of 332 mothers was recruited from National Health Service (NHS) prenatal clinics and general practice clinics in Wales, UK, between Fall of 2005 and Summer of 2007. Potential participants represented the full range of sociodemographic classifications of neighborhoods. Participating families were divided about equally between middle- and working-class families, were somewhat more likely to have sons than daughters, and the majority (90%) were in a stable partnership. In response to standard categories recommended for use in Wales at the time, the majority (93%) of mothers reported themselves as Welsh, Scottish, English, or Irish; most others named a European or South Asian nationality. Of the 332 families agreeing to participate, 321 mothers (Mage  = 28 years) and 285 partners (Mage  = 31 years) were interviewed during the pregnancy and 321 of the families contributed data at least once after the child's birth. After an initial home visit at 6 months, data collection occurred in four additional waves of testing when children's mean ages were approximately 1, 1.5, 2.5, and 7 years. Data collection alternated between family homes and Cardiff University. Of those families seen after the child's birth, 89% were assessed at the final wave of testing. Data collection ended in 2015. Methods included direct observation, experimental tasks, and collection of reports from mothers, fathers, other relatives or family friends, and classroom teachers. Interactions with a familiar peer were observed at 1.5 years. Interactions with unfamiliar peers took place during experimental birthday parties at 1 and 2.5 years. At 7 years, parents were interviewed, parents and teachers completed questionnaires, and the children engaged in cognitive and social decision-making tasks. Based on reports from parents and other informants who knew the children well, individual differences in both prosocial behavior and aggression were evident in children. Both types of behavior showed stability across the second and third years. The association between prosocial behavior and aggression changed over time: at 1.5 years, they were not significantly related (the association approached zero), but they became negatively correlated by 3 years. Different patterns were seen when children played with familiar versus unfamiliar peers. At 1.5 years, when children were observed at home with a familiar peer, prosocial behavior and aggression were unrelated, thus showing a pattern of results like that seen in the analysis of informants' reports. However, a different pattern emerged during the experimental birthday parties with unfamiliar peers: prosocial behavior and aggression were positively correlated at both 1 and 2.5 years, contributing to a general sociability factor at both ages. Gender differences in prosocial behavior were evident in informants' reports and were also evident at the 1-year (though not the 2.5-year) birthday parties. In contrast, gender differences in both prosocial behavior and aggression were evident by 7 years, both in children's aggressive decision-making and in their parents' and teachers' reports of children's aggressive behavior at home and school. By age 7, children's aggressive decision-making and behavior were inversely associated with their verbal skills, working memory, and emotional understanding. Some children had developed aggressive behavioral problems and callous-unemotional traits. A few (12%) met diagnostic criteria for conduct disorder or oppositional-defiant disorders, which had been predicted by early angry aggressiveness and lack of empathy for other people. Taken together, the findings revealed a gradual disaggregation of two ways in which children interact with other people. Individual differences in both prosocial behavior and aggression revealed continuity over time, with gender differences emerging first in prosocial behavior, then in aggression. Restrictions in the participant sample and the catchment area (e.g., all were first-time parents; all were drawn from a single region in the United Kingdom) mean that it is not possible to generalize findings broadly. It will be important to expand the study of prosocial behavior and aggression in other family and environmental contexts in future work. Learning more about early appearing individual differences in children's approaches to the social world may be useful for both educational and clinical practice.

A longitudinal study of the differential social-cognitive foundations of early prosocial behaviors

A growing body of work has documented the emergence of instrumental helping and sharing in the second year of life; however, less is known about mechanisms that underlie development and production of prosocial behavior. The current study took a longitudinal approach to explore whether the origins of prosocial behaviors can be traced back to foundational social-cognitive capacities emerging in infancy. In a sample of 90 children, longitudinal relations were examined between intention understanding and joint attention measured in infancy (8-12 months) and later instrumental helping and sharing behavior assessed in the toddler years (18-25 months). We expected social-cognitive capacities supporting infants' understanding of others to be positively related to their prosocial behaviors as toddlers. Measured variable path analyses revealed two distinct developmental pathways from infant social cognition to later prosocial behavior: 1) Instrumental helping in the toddler years was positively predicted by intention understanding in infancy; 2) sharing in the toddler years was positively predicted by infants' initiating joint attention. These results lend support to proposals on the multidimensional nature of early prosocial behavior and offer the first longitudinal evidence that the origins of toddlers' prosocial behavior can be traced to social-cognitive capacities emerging in infancy.

Empathy in Toddlers: The Role of Emotion Regulation, Language Ability, and Maternal Emotion Socialization Style

We investigated, through a cross-sectional study, whether and to what extent toddlers' empathy is associated with a set of individual and family factors known to foster positive social skills in early childhood: children's own emotion regulation, language ability, and maternal emotion socialization style. Participants were 320 toddlers (M _age = 28.8 months; SD = 3.55) and their mothers. The children came from middle-SES families and were recruited at 34 infant-toddler centers. We used parent-report measures to assess the toddlers' competences and a self-report questionnaire to evaluate maternal emotion socialization style (coaching vs. dismissing). Toddlers' empathic responses, as reported by their mothers, were positively and significantly correlated, respectively, with their positive emotion regulation, language skills, and maternal emotion-coaching style. Stepwise regression analysis revealed that emotion regulation and maternal emotion-coaching style contributed to explaining variance in toddlers' empathy, after controlling for the effects of children's age and language ability. Moderation analysis showed that emotion regulation skills did not moderate the relationship between maternal emotion-coaching style and children's empathy. We discuss the implications of these findings.

The Homogeneity and Heterogeneity of Moral Functioning in Preschool

The current study examined relations between distinct aspects of moral functioning, and their cognitive and emotional correlates, in preschool age children. Participants were 171 typically developing 3- to 6-year-olds. Each child completed several tasks, including (a) moral tasks assessing both performance of various moral actions and evaluations of moral scenarios presented both verbally and nonverbally; and (b) non-moral tasks assessing general cognitive skill, executive functioning, theory-of-mind, and emotion recognition. Shyness and empathic concern were assessed from video acquired during participation. Results demonstrated positive associations among distinct moral actions, as well as among distinct moral evaluation tasks, but few associations between tasks assessing moral actions and moral evaluation. Empathic concern and inhibitory control each emerged as important predictors of preschoolers' moral functioning.

Conflicting perspectives mediate the relation between parents' and preschoolers' self-referent mental state talk during collaboration

We examined the relations between the referent of parents and preschoolers' mental state talk during a collaborative puzzle-solving task (N = 146 dyads; n = 81 3-year-olds, n = 65 4-year-olds). The results showed that parents' references to their own knowledge and beliefs (self-referent cognitive talk), and references to their child's knowledge and beliefs (child-referent cognitive talk) were both related to children's (primarily self-referent) cognitive talk. We then tested whether any of the observed relations could be explained by the presence of conflicting perspectives within the collaborative interaction. Mediational analyses revealed that conflicting perspectives mediated the positive relation between parents' production of self-referent cognitive talk and child cognitive talk. By contrast, the positive relation between parents' production of child-referent cognitive talk and child cognitive talk did not depend on the presence of this type of conflict. These findings highlight an important mechanism through which parents' references to their own mind might promote children's developing mental state talk in collaborative contexts.

Toddlers' Self-Recognition and Progression From Goal- to Emotion-Based Helping: A Longitudinal Study

Research has typically used cross-sectional designs to draw conclusions on the development of helping. This study aimed to examine the development of instrumental and empathic helping behaviors as they emerge, and assess how self-recognition might moderate this progression. Seventy-two children (14- to 25-months at T1) were assessed over four monthly sessions. Participants' individual response patterns showed instrumental helping to be a necessary precursor to empathic helping for 55.77%-67.92% of children who helped during the study. Self-recognition emerged before empathic but not instrumental helping, yet did not directly influence helping behavior.

Shyness and Social Conflict Reduce Young Children's Social Helpfulness

This study examined social influences on 3-year-old children's decisions to help an experimenter gain another person's attention (N = 32). Children were slower to help the experimenter when the target had previously expressed disinterest in attending to her. Shy children were less likely to support the experimenter's attempts to communicate with the target; however, this association was not influenced by children's knowledge of the target's disinterest, and there was no relation between shyness and children's support for a separate physical goal. Therefore, young children's decisions to act helpfully incorporate consideration for others beyond a focal person with an unmet need, and they are further constrained by children's own comfort with the actions required to help.

Experience facilitates the emergence of sharing behavior among 7.5-month-old infants

Given the centrality of prosociality in everyday social functioning, understanding the factors and mechanisms underlying the origins of prosocial development is of critical importance. This experiment investigated whether experience with reciprocal object exchanges can drive the developmental onset of sharing behavior. Seven-month-old infants took part in 2 laboratory visits to assess their sharing behavior and ability to release objects. During the intervening 7- to 14-day period parents led infants in an intervention in which they were either encouraged to release objects into a container (bucket condition, n = 20), or share objects with the parent in the context of reciprocal object exchanges (sharing condition, n = 20). Results showed that infants in the sharing condition shared significantly more than infants in the bucket condition following the intervention, and infants in the sharing condition significantly increased their sharing behavior across the 2 visits. Parental empathy moderated the effect of this sharing intervention, but frequency of practice did not. These results suggest that reciprocal turn-taking in dyadic object-exchange interactions may facilitate the early emergence of sharing behavior, and this effect is mediated by parental empathy. (PsycINFO Database Record