Toddlers Prefer Agents Who Help Those Facing Harder Tasks

Capacities to understand and evaluate others' actions are fundamental to human social life. Infants and toddlers are sensitive to the costs of others' actions, infer others' values from the costs of the actions they take, and prefer those who help others to those who hinder them, but it is largely unknown whether and how cost considerations inform early understanding of third-party prosocial actions. In three experiments (N = 94), we asked whether 16-month-old toddlers value agents who selectively help those who need it most. Presented with two agents who attempted two tasks, toddlers preferentially looked to and touched someone who helped the agent in greater need, both when one agent's task required more effort and when the tasks were the same but one agent was weaker. These results provide evidence that toddlers engage in need-based evaluations of helping, applying their understanding of action utilities to their social evaluations.

(2009)

Previous research found that experimentally reducing people's belief in free will affects social behaviors. However, more recent investigations could not replicate several findings in this literature. An explanation for the mixed findings is that free will beliefs are related to social behaviors on a correlational level, but experimental manipulations are not able to detect this relation. To test this interpretation, we conceptually replicated and extended a landmark study in the free will belief literature originally conducted by Baumeister et al. In five studies (total N = 1,467), we investigated whether belief in free will predicts helping behavior in comparison to other beliefs related to free will. Overall, our results support the original findings, as belief in free will correlated with helping behavior. However, the results also show that the best predictor of helping behavior is not belief in free will but belief in dualism. Theoretical implications are discussed.

A Meta-Analytic Review of the Validity of the Tangram Help/Hurt Task

The Tangram Help/Hurt Task (THHT) allows participants to help another participant win a prize (by assigning them easy tangrams), to hurt another participant by preventing them from winning the prize (by assigning them difficult tangrams), or to do neither (by assigning them medium tangrams) in offline or online studies. Consistent with calls for continued evidence supporting psychological measurement, we conducted a meta-analytic review of the THHT that included 52 independent studies involving 11,060 participants. THHT scores were associated with helping and hurting outcomes in theoretically predicted ways. Results showed that THHT scores were not only associated with short-term (experimental manipulations, state measures) and long-term (trait measures) helping and hurting outcomes, but also with helping and harming intentions. We discuss the strengths and limitations of the THHT relative to other laboratory measures of prosocial behavior and aggression, discuss unanswered questions about the task, and offer suggestions for the best use of the task.

What is cooperative breeding in mammals and birds? Removing definitional barriers for comparative research

Cooperative breeding (i.e. when alloparents care for the offspring of other group members) has been studied for nearly a century. Yet, inconsistent definitions of this breeding system still hamper comparative research. Here, we identify two major inconsistencies, discuss their consequences and propose a way forward. First, some researchers restrict the term 'cooperative breeding' to species with non-breeding alloparents. We show that such restrictive definitions lack distinct quantitative criteria to define non-breeding alloparents. This ambiguity, we argue, reflects the reproductive-sharing continuum among cooperatively breeding species. We therefore suggest that cooperative breeding should not be restricted to the few species with extreme reproductive skew and should be defined independent of the reproductive status of alloparents. Second, definitions rarely specify the type, extent and prevalence of alloparental care required to classify species as cooperative breeders. We thus analysed published data to propose qualitative and quantitative criteria for alloparental care. We conclude by proposing the following operational definition: cooperative breeding is a reproductive system where >5% of broods/litters in at least one population receive species-typical parental care and conspecifics provide proactive alloparental care that fulfils >5% of at least one type of the offspring's needs. This operational definition is designed to increase comparability across species and disciplines while allowing to study the intriguing phenomenon of cooperative breeding as a behaviour with multiple dimensions.

The Relationship Between Cognitive Resource Consumption During Gameplay and Postgame Aggressive Behaviors: Between-Subjects Experiment

Background

The question of how video games can shape aggressive behaviors has been a focus for many researchers. Previous research has focused on how violent video game content leads to postgame aggressive behaviors. However, video games not only convey violence or prosocial content to players but also require cognitive effort from individuals. Since human cognitive resources are limited, consuming more cognitive resources in a game leads to less cognitive resources to suppress aggressive impulses. Therefore, the depletion of cognitive resources from playing video games may also lead to changes in postgame aggressive behaviors.

Objective

This study aimed to examine the relationship between cognitive resources consumed in video games and postgame aggressive behaviors.

Methods

A total of 60 participants (age: mean 20.22; range 18-24 y) were randomly assigned to either the high-load group or the low-load group. Participants from both groups played a video game centered around college life. In the low-load group, participants followed the gameplay instructions to complete it. In the high-load group, participants were given an extra digital memory task to complete while playing the game. Participants in both groups played the video game for about 25 minutes. A maze selection task was then conducted to measure the participants' helping and hurting behaviors.

Results

The independent samples 2-tailed t tests showed that the high-load group had significantly higher hurting scores (mean 3.13, SD 2.47) than the low-load group (mean 1.90, SD 2.12; t58=-2.07, P=.04; Cohen d=-0.535), whereas helping behaviors were not significantly affected (t58=1.52, P=.13; Cohen d=0.393).

Conclusions

As more cognitive resources are consumed in a video game, more hurting behaviors are exhibited after the game. This finding proposes an alternative route by which video games impact aggressive behaviors, adding to previous theories and raising concerns about the popularity of cognitive training games.

Best of both worlds? Helpers in a cooperative fairy-wren assist most to breeding pairs that comprise a potential mate and a relative

In cooperative breeders, individuals forego independent reproduction and help others raise offspring. Helping is proposed to be driven by indirect benefits from raising relatives, and/or direct benefits from raising additional recruits or helping itself. We propose that consideration of social context is also important, in particular the characteristics of the breeding pair: helping may also serve to lighten the workload of-or maintain social bonds with-breeders (e.g. kin, potential mates) who in turn can offer benefits to helpers (e.g. prolonged nepotism, future mating, future production of relatives). Here, we test this hypothesis, while controlling for potential direct and indirect benefits from raising offspring, in purple-crowned fairy-wrens (Malurus coronatus) exhibiting variation in social group composition, and thus, breeder value. We show that helper provisioning rates to the nest were explained by characteristics of breeders that helpers assisted, rather than benefits from raising offspring. The presence of at least one related breeder was a prerequisite to help, but helpers provisioned most if assisting a relative and potential mate. Neglecting to take group composition into account would have led to misinterpretation of our results. A comprehensive understanding of the evolution of cooperative breeding hence requires nuanced consideration of social context.

Assessment of help value affects reciprocation in Norway rats

Wild-type Norway rats reciprocate help received in a well-replicated experimental food-giving task, but the criteria to appraise the received help's value are unclear. We tested whether quality or quantity of received help is more important when deciding to return help, and whether partner familiarity and own current need affect this evaluation. We experimentally varied recipients of help's hunger state, and familiar or unfamiliar partners provided either higher caloric food (enhanced quantity; carrots) or food higher in protein and fat (enhanced quality; cheese). Reciprocation of received help was our criterion for the rats' value assessment. Familiarity, food type and hunger state interacted and affected help returned by rats. Rats returned less help to familiar partners than to unfamiliar partners. With unfamiliar partners, rats returned more help to partners that had donated preferred food (cheese) than to partners that had donated less preferred food (carrots), and they returned help earlier if they were satiated and had received cheese. With familiar partners, food-deprived rats that had received cheese returned more help than satiated rats that had received carrots. Our results suggest that Norway rats assess the received help's value based on its quality, their current need and partner familiarity before reciprocating received help.

Bystander Intervention in Intimate Partner Violence: An Audio Vignette Study of Heterosexual, Gay, and Lesbian Dating Partners

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a prolific and growing issue that can have long-lasting negative consequences for the health and safety of those involved. Bystander intervention is one method for helping to combat incidents of IPV, as research suggests that bystanders are frequently present at the scene of assaults and incidents of IPV. This study explored individual differences of bystanders that may influence whether they decide to intervene in an unfolding incident of IPV, as well as how the likelihood of intervening may vary as a function of the apparent gender or sexual orientation of the individuals involved in an incident of IPV. Participants were recruited from an online survey platform to obtain a balanced sample of heterosexual and sexual minority individuals. Participants completed a bystander task where they listened to an audio vignette of an unfolding IPV incident and were instructed to stop the audio if/when they would intervene in a real-life context. Participants were randomly assigned to listen to one of four versions of the vignette in which the apparent gender of the aggressor and victim were manipulated. Results revealed participants were more likely to intervene if they identified as a sexual minority (vs. as a heterosexual), reported less rape myth acceptance, or had greater endorsement of gender equality. Results also revealed that associations between bystander characteristics and intervening behavior largely did not differ across vignette conditions, suggesting that they may influence the likelihood of intervening consistently across incidents of IPV regardless of the apparent gender and sexual orientation of the aggressor and victim. However, participants in general were most likely to intervene in the male aggressor/female victim vignette. Implications for IPV prevention programming-including the need to include more diverse and less heteronormative depictions of IPV-are discussed.

Examining the influence of shyness on children's helping and comforting behaviour

Introduction

Shy children, who tend to feel anxious around others and withdraw from social interactions, are found to be less prosocial than their not-shy peers in some studies, though not in others. To examine the contexts in which shy children may be more or less likely to engage in prosocial behaviour, we compared children's willingness and ability to intervene during in-person tasks that differed in social engagement demands and complexity, factors that have been conflated in past research.

Methods

We presented 42, 3.5- to 4.5-year-old children with prosocial problems that varied, in a 2 x 2 within-subjects design, by the type of intervention required (i.e., simple helping or complex comforting) and the source of the problem (i.e., social: within the experimenter's personal space; or object: a target object distanced from her).

Results

Most of the children acted prosocially, with little prompting, in the two helping tasks and in the object-centered comforting task. In contrast, fewer than half of the children acted prosocially in the social-centered comforting task. Shyer children were not less likely to intervene in any of the four tasks, but they were slower to intervene in the object-centred comforting task, in which the experimenter was upset about a broken toy.

Discussion

Thus, providing social-centered comfort to a recently-introduced adult is challenging for young children, regardless of shyness, though shy children do show hesitancy with object-centered comforting. Further, these findings provide insights into the methodological challenges of disentangling children's prosocial motivation and understanding, and we propose solutions to these challenges for future research.

Gratitude endures while indebtedness persuades: investigating the unique influences of gratitude and indebtedness in helping

What is the temporal course of gratitude and indebtedness and how do these feelings influence helping in the context of reciprocity? In an online-game tapping real-life behaviour, Study 1 (N = 106) finds that while gratitude towards a benefactor remains elevated after an opportunity to reciprocate, indebtedness declines along with helping. Yet, indebtedness rather than gratitude better predicts real-life helping of a benefactor. Using a vignette-based experiment, Study 2 (N = 217) finds that after reciprocation indebtedness and likelihood of helping a benefactor reset to a baseline level while gratitude endures. Furthermore, the decrease in helping after reciprocation is better explained by indebtedness than by gratitude. Study 3 (N = 217) assessed the unique influences of gratitude and indebtedness on helping by comparing contexts in which gratitude is at a baseline level but indebtedness is elevated (e.g. before a monetary payment for a service received) to contexts in which indebtedness is at a baseline level but gratitude is elevated (e.g. after reciprocation of benefits freely given by a friend). People are more likely to help in the former compared to latter context, and this difference is better explained by indebtedness rather than by gratitude. We discuss the interrelated and understudied relationships between gratitude, indebtedness, and reciprocity.

Neural basis of prosocial behavior

The ability to behave in ways that benefit other individuals' well-being is among the most celebrated human characteristics crucial for social cohesiveness. Across mammalian species, animals display various forms of prosocial behaviors - comforting, helping, and resource sharing - to support others' emotions, goals, and/or material needs. In this review, we provide a cross-species view of the behavioral manifestations, proximate and ultimate drives, and neural mechanisms of prosocial behaviors. We summarize key findings from recent studies in humans and rodents that have shed light on the neural mechanisms underlying different processes essential for prosocial interactions, from perception and empathic sharing of others' states to prosocial decisions and actions.

Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Preschoolers' Helping, Sharing, and Comforting: The Moderating Role of Child Attachment

Maternal depressive symptoms (MDS) are inconsistently associated with lower rates of child prosocial behavior. Studies typically examine prosocial behavior as a unitary construct rather than examining its multiple dimensions, and rarely consider how the quality of the parent-child relationship could influence this association.Objective: The current study examines whether the security of the parent-child attachment relationship moderates the association between MDS and children's helping, sharing, and comforting behaviors.Method: Participants were 164 low-income, majority African American mothers and their preschool-aged children recruited from Head Start centers. Mothers reported the frequency of depressive symptoms at baseline; child attachment security and helping, sharing, and comforting behavior were observationally assessed 5 to 8 months later.Results: Moderation analyses revealed a positive main effect of security (but not MDS) on children's comforting behavior, a main effect of MDS on sharing, and no main effects of MDS or security on children's helping behaviors. Significant interactions between MDS and security predicted comforting and (marginally) helping behaviors, such that MDS were associated with both more helping and more comforting behavior only when children were more secure. No such interaction was observed for sharing.Conclusions: These findings suggest that children may adapt to maternal depressive symptoms in prosocial ways, but that this depends at least in part on the quality of the parent-child relationship, underscoring the importance of examining attachment quality as a moderator of parental influences on children's social-emotional development. We discuss potential explanations for these findings, as well as their implications for intervention.

Individual variation explains ageing patterns in a cooperatively breeding bird, the long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus)

1. Alloparental care in cooperatively-breeding species may alter breeder age-specific survival and reproduction, and subsequently senescence. The helping behaviour itself might also undergo age-related change, and decisions to help in facultative cooperative breeders are likely to be affected by individual condition. 2. Helpers in long-tailed tits (Aegithalos caudatus) assist relatives after failing to raise their own brood, with offspring from helped nests being more likely to recruit into the breeding population. 3. Using data collected over 25 years, we examined the age-trajectories of survival and reproduction in adult long-tailed tits to determine how these were affected by the presence or absence of helpers, and how helper behaviour changed with age. 4. There was evidence for increased reproductive performance with breeder age, but no effect of age on the probability of survival. We found no evidence of significant senescent decline in survival or reproductive performance, although individuals accrued less inclusive fitness in their last year of life. Lifetime reproductive success was positively related to both reproductive lifespan and body mass. Within a season, breeders that were assisted by helpers enjoyed greater reproductive success through enhanced offspring recruitment in the following year. We found no evidence that age affected an individual's propensity to help, or the amount of indirect fitness accrued through helping. 5. We found a positive correlation between lifespan and multiple components of reproductive success, suggesting that individual variation in quality underpins age-related variation in fitness in this species. Helping decisions are driven by condition, and lifetime inclusive fitness of immigrants was predicted by body mass. These findings further support individual heterogeneity in quality being a major driver for fitness gains across the life course of long-tailed tits.

Does Activating the Human Identity Improve Health-Related Behaviors During COVID-19?: A Social Identity Approach

Taking a social identity approach to health behaviors, this research examines whether experimentally "activating" the human identity is an effective public-health strategy to curb the spread of COVID-19. Three goals of the research include examining: (1) whether the human identity can be situationally activated using an experimental manipulation, (2) whether activating the human identity causally increases behavioral intentions to protect the self and others from COVID-19, and (3) whether activating the human identity causally increases behaviors that help protect vulnerable communities from COVID-19. Across two preregistered experiments (total N = 675), results suggest (1) the manipulation of identification with humanity had a significant but small effect on participants' psychological bond with all humanity (Cohen's ds = 0.21 - 0.27), but not their concern for all humanity. However, the manipulation had (2) no causal effect on health-related behavioral intentions or (3) helping behaviors that reduce the spread of COVID-19. Limitations, future directions, and direct benefits of the research are discussed.

Who helps and why? A longitudinal exploration of volunteer role identity, between-group closeness, and community identification as predictors of coordinated helping during the COVID-19 pandemic

Mutual aid groups have allowed community members to respond collectively to the COVID-19 pandemic, providing essential support to the vulnerable. While research has begun to explore the benefits of participating in these groups, there is a lack of work investigating who is likely to engage in this form of aid-giving, although early accounts suggest that existing volunteers have played a significant part in the mutual aid phenomena. Taking a social identity approach, the present study sought to identify what social psychological processes predict this continued engagement by exploring predictors of coordinated COVID-19 aid-giving for pre-existing volunteers. A two-wave longitudinal online survey study (N = 214) revealed that volunteer role identity among existing volunteers at T1 (pre-pandemic) was positively associated with volunteer-beneficiary between-group closeness at T1, which in turn was positively associated with community identification at T1. This in turn positively predicted coordinated COVID-19 aid-giving at T2 (3 months later). This paper therefore reveals the intra- and intergroup predictors of pandemic-related coordinated aid-giving in pre-existing volunteers. Implications for voluntary organisations and emergency voluntary aid provision are discussed.

Helping as a Concurrent Activity: How Students Engage in Small Groups While Pursuing Classroom Tasks

This study examines interactions in which students help each other with their learning during classroom instruction, forming groups in the process. From a conversation analytic perspective, helping is assumed to be a sequentially organized activity jointly accomplished by the participants. As an activity that proceeds alongside other ongoing classroom activities, helping can be conceived as part of a multiactivity that poses students with multi-faceted interactional and moral challenges. While previous research on helping in educational contexts has primarily focused on the influence of helping on learning outcomes and social dynamics in helping interactions, the present study investigates how students cope with the intricacies of moral commitments inherent in helping as a concurrent activity. The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, we aim to elaborate on how students’ dual involvements – i.e., their involvement in classroom activities while simultaneously providing help – manifest in the ways in which groups are constituted, maintained, and dissolved. The analyses reveal that both the compatibility of helping with the activity already in progress as well as the students’ problem definition are consequential for the sequential and bodily-spatial unfolding of the help interaction, inducing different arrangements that constitute a continuum, at each end of which there is a dominant orientation toward the shared space of helping or toward the individual/collective space. Furthermore, from a methodological perspective, our study aims to demonstrate the extent to which multimodal interaction analysis is applicable when examining naturally occurring groups, in this case, in interactive processes of helping. The study is based on a data corpus that comprises video recordings of mathematics and German lessons from two fifth-grade classrooms.

Taking Care of Friends: The Implementation Evaluation of a Peer-Focused School Program Using First Aid to Reduce Adolescent Risk-Taking and Injury

Injury is a leading cause of adolescent deaths, with risk-taking associated with a sizeable proportion of injuries and many of those risks undertaken in the presence of peers or with peers’ knowledge. Novel ways to promote safety are required and using the peer-relationship may be an important mechanism for prevention. This study reports on the implementation evaluation of the Skills for Preventing Injury in Youth (SPIY) program. SPIY is a high-school program designed to reduce injury by encouraging peers to look out for one another and prevent risk-taking, complemented by developing peer helping and first aid skills as well as school connectedness. 152 students and 12 teachers who delivered SPIY participated in separate 30 min focus groups and reported on students’ understanding of peer protective behaviour and the program implementation (adherence, dose, quality of program delivery, and participant responsiveness). Students reported on many approaches to protecting friends and both students and teachers reported they found the program interesting, interactive, and able to be delivered. Peer protection messages were relevant and acceptable to teachers and students in a risk-taking harm reduction program to reduce adolescent injury.

The relationship between empathic concern and perceived personal costs for helping and how it is affected by similarity perceptions

One explanation for the positive effect of state empathic concern on helping is that such other-focused feelings reduce helpers' perceptions of their personal costs for helping. Results from an experiment (N = 186) supported these assumptions and showed further that self-focused feelings of personal distress, another form of affective empathy, were a positive predictor of perceived costs. Moreover, I examined whether the strength of the negative relationship between empathic concern and personal costs depends on two forms of perceived similarity between the helper and the target, person similarity and experience similarity. For this purpose, I manipulated person similarity by portraying the target as either similar or dissimilar with regard to essential characteristics, and assessed experience similarity by asking whether or not participants share the target's negative experience. As predicted, the negative relationship between empathic concern and perceived personal costs was strongest when person similarity was high and experience similarity low.

Helping While Social Distancing: Pathogen Avoidance Motives Influence People's Helping Intentions during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The behavioral immune system (BIS) theory suggests that pathogen avoidance motives relate to greater behavioral avoidance against social interactions that pose potential risks of pathogen transmission. Based on the BIS theory, pathogen avoidance motives would decrease people’s helping behavior towards others. However, would pathogen avoidance motives decrease all types of helping behavior towards others during the Coronavirus disease 2019 (i.e., COVID-19) pandemic indiscriminately? In the present study, we conducted a within-subjects design to compare people’s helping intentions toward voluntary work with and without social contact. Specifically, participants (N = 1562) completed an online survey at the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in China measuring pathogen disgust sensitivity, state anxiety, and intentions to perform volunteer work with and without social contact. Results revealed that pathogen disgust sensitivity negatively predicted intentions to perform voluntary work with social contact yet had no influence on intentions to perform socially distanced voluntary work. Moreover, the effect of pathogen disgust sensitivity on socially distanced volunteering preference was mediated by the state anxiety people experienced during the pandemic. The findings have implications for understanding people’s helping behavior during the pandemic.

God Helps Those Who Help Themselves: How Recipients' Efforts Perception Affects Donation

This research examines how recipients’ efforts to get out of the plight affect the empathy they evoke and the subsequent help they receive from donors. Through three experiments, we find that the higher the efforts made by the recipients to get out of the plight, the stronger the donors’ willingness to donate. This effect is moderated by the need severity of the recipients. The more serious the plight is, the stronger the impact of the degree of efforts on the willingness to donate. This research makes theoretical contributions to charitable giving and provides implications for non-profit organizations on describing recipients’ efforts to get out of their plight.

"O Sister, Where Art Thou?"-A Review on Rescue of Imperiled Individuals in Ants

Altruism is defined as an action that decreases the lifetime direct fitness of an actor and benefits one or more recipients. This phenomenon, which is generally difficult to understand and explain, requires special research attention. The subject of this review, rescue, is a type of altruistic behavior in which the actor puts itself at risk to save another individual, the recipient, that is in danger. The highest numbers of published empirical works have been devoted to rescue behavior in ants and they have enormous potential for further study. We review studies devoted to the subject and group them into four main areas of research on ant rescue actions: (1) variation in rescue behavior activity on a between-individual scale, (2) factors contributing to the evolution of rescue behavior on a between-species scale, (3) rescue behavior releaser signals and (4) rescue behavior benefits and costs. We highlight the progress in research on rescue behavior in ants, indicate that this behavior is probably much more common than previously thought yet thus far demonstrated in only a few species, and uncover research gaps and open questions that remain unexplored. We additionally point out some gaps in knowledge that become evident when research devoted to rescue behavior in rats, the second most studied group of animals in this context, is briefly overviewed. We hope to help navigate among studies on rescue behavior and provide the most up-to-date summary of the relevant literature. Moreover, we hope to encourage and facilitate researchers in behavioral ecology and other subdisciplines to further experimentally analyze rescue behavior, not only in ants but also in other taxa.

Collectively coping with coronavirus: Local community identification predicts giving support and lockdown adherence during the COVID-19 pandemic

The role of shared identity in predicting both ingroup helping behaviour and adherence to protective norms during COVID-19 has been extensively theorized, but remains largely under-investigated. We build upon previous Social Identity research into community resilience by testing the role of pre-existing local community (or 'neighbourhood') identity as a predictor of these outcomes, via the mediator of perceived social support. Community residents in the UK completed a longitudinal online survey four months before lockdown (T1; N = 253), one month before lockdown (T2; N = 217), and two months into lockdown (T3; N = 149). The cross-lagged panel analysis shows that T1 community identification predicts T3 giving and receiving of pandemic-related support, and that these effects occur via the perception of community support at the second time point (while the alternative pathway from T1 support via T2 identification is non-significant). Moreover, we show that T1 community identification also directly predicts lockdown adherence at T3. Our findings point to the pivotal role played by community identity in effective behavioural responses to the pandemic, and the need to support and foster community development to facilitate local community resilience as the crisis continues to unfold.

Reaching Out for Inaccessible Food Is a Potential Begging Signal in Cooperating Wild-Type Norway Rats, Rattus norvegicus

Begging is widespread in juvenile animals. It typically induces helpful behaviours in parents and brood care helpers. However, begging is sometimes also shown by adults towards unrelated social partners. Adult Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) display a sequence of different behaviours in a reciprocal food provisioning task that have been interpreted as such signals of need. The first behaviour in this sequence represents reaching out for a food item the animal cannot obtain independently. This may reflect either an attempt to grasp the food object by itself, or a signal to the social partner communicating the need for help. To distinguish between these two possibilities, we tested in female wild-type Norway rats if the amount of reaching performed by a food-deprived rat changes with the presence/absence of food and a social partner. Focal rats displayed significantly more reaching behaviour, both in terms of number and total duration of events, when food and a potentially helpful partner were present compared to when either was missing. Our findings hence support the hypothesis that rats use reaching behaviour to signal need to social partners that can help them to obtain food.

Development of functional network architecture explains changes in children's altruistically motivated helping

Childhood is marked by profound changes in prosocial behaviour. The underlying motivational mechanisms remain poorly understood. We investigated the development of altruistically motivated helping in middle childhood and the neurocognitive and -affective mechanisms driving this development. One-hundred and twenty seven 6-12 year-old children performed a novel gustatory costly helping task designed to measure altruistic motivations of helping behaviour. Neurocognitive and -affective mechanisms including emotion regulation, emotional clarity and attentional reorienting were assessed experimentally through an extensive task-battery while functional brain activity and connectivity were measured during an empathy for taste paradigm and during rest. Altruistically motivated helping increased with age. Out of all mechanisms probed for, only emotional clarity increased with age and accounted for altruistically motivated helping. This was associated with greater functional integration of the empathy-related network with fronto-parietal brain regions at rest. We isolate a highly specific neuroaffective mechanism as the crucial driver of altruistically motivated helping during child development.

Effect of obligation to help on positive affect: Comparing Japan, Romania, and the United States

Culture shapes the experience of obligation. Comparing participants from three countries with different cultural backgrounds, this study investigated the effect of obligation to help on positive affect and satisfaction of basic psychological needs. Adult participants from Japan, Romania, and the United States recalled either a situation in which they helped spontaneously, without being directly requested to do so (agentic help), or a situation in which they felt obligated to respond to a direct request for help (obligated help). The results revealed that obligation reduced benefactors' positive affect, but less so in Japan. The effect of obligation on satisfaction of basic psychological needs did not differ by culture. The results suggest that obligation to help may have less detrimental effects on positive affect in countries such as Japan, where social expectations to help are more fully internalized.

'Alms! Alms! Give us some support!': an inquiry on the homeless

COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by a new coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2. The prevalence of the virus on a global scale led to a global health crisis which prompted countries like the Philippines to address the issue through the implementation of various health-related protocols, legislative laws, and COVID-19 mass vaccination programs for the establishment of herd immunity. Such government actions are undeniably significant in resolving the booming positive cases but the subjects (or who should receive the services) are, to some extent, unclear and overlooked the situation of ‘Others’ – the homeless. The author argues that the Philippine government, other social institutions, and organizations must consider the well-being of this group as one of the hidden disadvantaged individuals amid the crisis.

Neural correlates of ingroup bias for prosociality in rats

Prosocial behavior, in particular helping others in need, occurs preferentially in response to distress of one’s own group members. In order to explore the neural mechanisms promoting mammalian helping behavior, a discovery-based approach was used here to identify brain-wide activity correlated with helping behavior in rats. Demonstrating social selectivity, rats helped others of their strain (‘ingroup’), but not rats of an unfamiliar strain (‘outgroup’), by releasing them from a restrainer. Analysis of brain-wide neural activity via quantification of the early-immediate gene c-Fos identified a shared network, including frontal and insular cortices, that was active in the helping test irrespective of group membership. In contrast, the striatum was selectively active for ingroup members, and activity in the nucleus accumbens, a central network hub, correlated with helping. In vivo calcium imaging showed accumbens activity when rats approached a trapped ingroup member, and retrograde tracing identified a subpopulation of accumbens-projecting cells that was correlated with helping. These findings demonstrate that motivation and reward networks are associated with helping an ingroup member and provide the first description of neural correlates of ingroup bias in rodents.

The balance of giving versus receiving social support and all-cause mortality in a US national sample

While numerous studies exist on the benefits of social support (both receiving and giving), little research exists on how the balance between the support that individuals regularly give versus that which they receive from others relates to physical health. In a US national sample of 6,325 adults from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States, participants were assessed at baseline on hours of social support given and received on a monthly basis, with all-cause mortality data collected from the National Death Index over a 23-y follow-up period. Participants who were relatively balanced in the support they gave compared to what they received had a lower risk of all-cause mortality than those who either disproportionately received support from others (e.g., received more hours of support than they gave each month) or disproportionately gave support to others (e.g., gave many more hours of support a month than they received). These findings applied to instrumental social support (e.g., help with transportation, childcare). Additionally, participants who gave a moderate amount of instrumental social support had a lower risk of all-cause mortality than those who either gave very little support or those who gave a lot of support to others. Associations were evident over and above demographic, medical, mental health, and health behavior covariates. Although results are correlational, one interpretation is that promoting a balance, in terms of the support that individuals regularly give relative to what they receive in their social relationships, may not only help to strengthen the social fabric of society but may also have potential physical health benefits.

Collectively coping with coronavirus: Local community identification predicts giving support and lockdown adherence during the COVID-19 pandemic

The role of shared identity in predicting both ingroup helping behaviour and adherence to protective norms during COVID-19 has been extensively theorized, but remains largely under-investigated. We build upon previous Social Identity research into community resilience by testing the role of pre-existing local community (or 'neighbourhood') identity as a predictor of these outcomes, via the mediator of perceived social support. Community residents in the UK completed a longitudinal online survey four months before lockdown (T1; N = 253), one month before lockdown (T2; N = 217), and two months into lockdown (T3; N = 149). The cross-lagged panel analysis shows that T1 community identification predicts T3 giving and receiving of pandemic-related support, and that these effects occur via the perception of community support at the second time point (while the alternative pathway from T1 support via T2 identification is non-significant). Moreover, we show that T1 community identification also directly predicts lockdown adherence at T3. Our findings point to the pivotal role played by community identity in effective behavioural responses to the pandemic, and the need to support and foster community development to facilitate local community resilience as the crisis continues to unfold.

Preschoolers' Helping Motivations: Altruistic, Egoistic or Diverse?

Based on Eisenberg et al.'s model of prosocial motivations, the present study examined what motivates preschoolers to display instrumental helping and how various motivations develop during the preschool years. The participants were 477 preschoolers aged 3–5 years assigned to one of five groups. In each experimental group, the experimenter emphasized an altruistic or egoistic helping motivation, namely, empathic concern, moral rules, praise or rewards. In the control group, no helping motivations were emphasized. Their instrumental helping was then measured by sorting cards for a sick child to play a game. The results show that each helping motivation had a positive effect on instrumental helping. Most of the motivational effects were similar across age, but the motivational effect of empathic concern increased obviously at the age of 5 years. Therefore, the present study reveals that both altruistic and egoistic motivations motivate preschoolers to help others. Most of the motivations develop steadily during the preschool years, but empathic concern as an altruistic motivation increases greatly at the end of the preschool years. The present study thus confirms the diversity of preschoolers' helping motivations with Eisenberg et al.'s model of prosocial motivations.

You May Have My Help but Not Necessarily My Care: The Effect of Social Class and Empathy on Prosociality

Previous research has focused on the relation between social class and prosocial behavior. However, this relation is yet unclear. In this work, we shed light on this issue by considering the effect of the level of empathy and the social class of the recipient of help on two types of prosociality, namely helping and caring. In one experimental study, we found that for high-class participants, empathy had a positive effect on helping, regardless of the recipient’s social class. However, empathy had no effect for low-class participants. When it comes to caring, empathy had a positive effect for both high and low-class participants, but only when the recipient of help belonged to the same social class. This highlights that empathy by itself is not sufficient to promote cooperative relations and that the social class of the recipient of help should be taken into account to shed light on this issue.

The mental health benefits of community helping during crisis: Coordinated helping, community identification and sense of unity during the COVID-19 pandemic

Communities are vital sources of support during crisis, providing collective contexts for shared identity and solidarity that predict supportive, prosocial responses. The COVID‐19 pandemic has presented a global health crisis capable of exerting a heavy toll on the mental health of community members while inducing unwelcome levels of social disconnection. Simultaneously, lockdown restrictions have forced vulnerable community members to depend upon the support of fellow residents. Fortunately, voluntary helping can be beneficial to the well‐being of the helper as well as the recipient, offering beneficial collective solutions. Using insights from social identity approaches to volunteering and disaster responses, this study explored whether the opportunity to engage in helping fellow community members may be both unifying and beneficial for those engaging in coordinated community helping. Survey data collected in the UK during June 2020 showed that coordinated community helping predicted the psychological bonding of community members by building a sense of community identification and unity during the pandemic, which predicted increased well‐being and reduced depression and anxiety. Implications for the promotion and support of voluntary helping initiatives in the context of longer‐term responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic are provided. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

Message Framing Effects on Individuals' Social Distancing and Helping Behavior During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This research responds to urgent calls to fill knowledge gaps on COVID-19 (new coronavirus) in communicating social distancing messages to the public in the most convincing ways. The authors explore the effectiveness of framing social distancing messages around prosocial vs. self-interested appeals in driving message compliance and helping behavior. The results show that when a message emphasizes benefits for everyone in society, rather than solely for the individual, citizens find the message more persuasive to engage in social distancing, and also more motivating to help others. The results further demonstrate that the proposed effects are higher for individuals who have a lower locus of control and lower fear of coronavirus as prosocial messages lead them to feel a joint responsibility in protecting from the pandemic. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.

Loosening the GRIP (Gender Roles Inhibiting Prosociality) to Promote Gender Equality

Prosociality is an ideal context to begin shifting traditional gender role stereotypes and promoting equality. Men and women both help others frequently, but assistance often follows traditional gender role expectations, which further reinforces restrictive gender stereotypes in other domains. We propose an integrative process model of gender roles inhibiting prosociality (GRIP) to explain why and how this occurs. We argue that prosociality provides a unique entry point for change because it is (a) immediately rewarding (which cultivates positive attitude formation), (b) less likely to threaten the gender status hierarchy, and therefore less susceptible to social backlash (which translates into less restrictive social norms), and (c) a skill that can be learned (which leads to stronger beliefs in one's own ability to help). Using the GRIP model, we derive a series of hypothesized interventions to interrupt the self-reinforcing cycle of gender role stereotyping and facilitate progress toward broader gender equality.

Halfway to My Request Is Not Halfway to My Heart: Underestimating Appreciation for Partial Help

When being asked for help, people sometimes can only offer part of what is requested (i.e., partial help). The present research investigates whether helpers can accurately forecast how much help-seekers appreciate this understudied form of assistance. From multiple helping scenarios and a face-to-face interaction, we demonstrate an asymmetry in helpers' and help-seeker's appraisals of partial help: Helpers anticipated less appreciation for partial help than help-seekers felt in receiving it. This asymmetry arose from helpers' greater valuation of helping outcomes over intentions to be helpful than help-seekers'. Accordingly, when helpers' intentions were discounted, this asymmetry no longer persisted. Another account-helpers feel worse for breaking norms of helping than help-seekers-was not supported. We discuss several directions for future research on the psychology of partial prosocial behaviors.

Measuring global bystander intervention and exploring its antecedents for helping refugees

Although the bystander intervention model provides a useful account of how people help others, no previous study has applied it to a global emergency. This research aims to develop a scale for measuring global bystander intervention and investigate its potential antecedents in the Syrian refugee emergency. In Study 1 (N = 80) and Study 2 (N = 205), a 12-item scale was established through a substantive-validity assessment and a confirmatory factor analysis, respectively. Study 3 (N = 601) explored the potential antecedents of the global bystander intervention, employing British and German samples. Results show that the global bystander intervention model worked for both samples, but there were significant between-group differences in terms of the extent to which they notice the emergency, know how to help, show political support, and donate money. Overall, the visibility of the global emergency aftermaths within the context has been deduced as a meaningful driver for between-group differences. This research provides the first empirical evidence on global bystander intervention and it offers timely suggestions to promote support for refugees or other victims of global disasters, especially among those who are distant to the disaster zone.

Breeders are less active foragers than non-breeders in wild Damaraland mole-rats

Eusocial societies are characterized by a clear division of labour between non-breeding workers and breeding queens, and queens often do not contribute to foraging, defence and other maintenance tasks. It has been suggested that the structure and organization of social mole-rat groups resembles that of eusocial insect societies. However, the division of labour has rarely been investigated in wild mole-rats, and it is unknown whether breeders show decreased foraging activity compared with non-breeding helpers in natural groups. Here, we show that, in wild Damaraland mole-rats (Fukomys damarensis), breeders show lower activity in foraging areas than non-breeding group members. Both breeders and non-breeders displayed variation in activity across the different seasons. Our results suggest that group living allows social mole-rat breeders to reduce their investment in energetically costly behaviour, or alternatively, that the high cost of reproduction in this species forces a behavioural trade-off against foraging investment.

Young children's prosocial responses toward peers and adults in two social contexts

Young children help and share with others, but little is known about the "how" and "who" of this early prosocial behavior. In the current study, we compared 2- and 3-year-old children's (N = 203; 101 girls) prosocial behavior of sharing and helping. We asked whether the process was different (a) if the social partner was an adult or a same-age peer and (b) if the child was actively interacting and engaged with the partner or not. The highest prosocial responses were found in bilateral joint tasks such as sharing the spoils after a collaborative effort and helping a partner finish a mutual activity. Prosocial responses were lower in unilateral autonomous tasks such as assisting another person in opening a locked box and distributing a windfall of resources. Children did not show an overall preference for helping or sharing with adults versus peers except that they were more likely to support a peer than an adult in an instrumental helping task. Together, these findings suggest that toddlers' early prosocial skills and motivations are more sensitive to how toddlers are engaged with a partner than to who that partner is, implying that children have a nondiscriminatory general inclination to benefit others, especially in bilateral interactive scenarios.

"What Should I Do First?" The Effect of Manipulated Goal Conflict on Affect, Motivation, and Helping Behavior in Chronic Pain Couples

Although support provision by a partner is an important resource for individuals with chronic pain (ICPs), it poses a challenge for partners because it competes with other important personal goals of partners. The current study examined the impact of experimentally induced goal conflict in partners on their motives for helping, quality of provided help, and on partners' and ICPs' affect. Sixty-eight couples, with at least one person having chronic pain, performed 2 series of household activities, with partners either asked to be simply available for help (ie, control condition) or to additionally work on a puzzle task (ie, goal conflict condition). Couples reported on interpersonal (eg, helping motives) and intrapersonal (eg, affect) outcomes. In addition, quality of partners' helping behavior and ICPs' pain behavior were videotaped and coded afterward. In the goal conflict condition, ICPs were less satisfied with the received help and they experienced more pain. Also, the quality of the provided help was lower and partners experienced less positive and more negative affect. Addressing partners' goal conflict in clinical practice may help to avoid its negative impact on both ICPs and partners. Perspective: This article provides a compelling argument to include partners in chronic pain treatment by demonstrating the detrimental effects of partners' experienced conflicts in goals upon the quality of help they provide, partners' affective functioning, and ICPs' pain-related outcomes.

Reciprocity creates a stake in one's partner, or why you should cooperate even when anonymous

Why do we care so much for friends, even making sacrifices for them they cannot repay or never know about? When organisms engage in reciprocity, they have a stake in their partner's survival and wellbeing so the reciprocal relationship can persist. This stake (aka fitness interdependence) makes organisms willing to help beyond the existing reciprocal arrangement (e.g. anonymously). I demonstrate this with two mathematical models in which organisms play a prisoner's dilemma, and where helping keeps their partner alive and well. Both models shows that reciprocity creates a stake in partners' welfare: those who help a cooperative partner--even when anonymous--do better than those who do not, because they keep that cooperative partner in good enough condition to continue the reciprocal relationship. 'Machiavellian' cooperators, who defect when anonymous, do worse because their partners become incapacitated. This work highlights the fact that reciprocity and stake are not separate evolutionary processes, but are inherently linked.

School Personnel's Bystander Action in Situations of Dating Violence, Sexual Violence, and Sexual Harassment Among High School Teens: A Qualitative Analysis

We examined school personnel's engagement in bystander action in situations of teen dating violence (DV), sexual violence (SV), and sexual harassment (SH). We conducted focus groups with 22 school personnel from three high schools in New Hampshire. School personnel identified their own barriers to intervening in situations of teen DV, SV, and SH (e.g., not having the time or ability to intervene). School personnel also discussed the ways in which they intervened before (e.g., talking with teens about healthy relationships), during (e.g., breaking up fights between dating partners) and after (e.g., comforting victims) instances of teen DV, SV, and SH. These data can be used to support the development of bystander training for school personnel as one component of comprehensive DV, SV, and SH prevention for teens. In addition, these data provide information that can be used to develop measures that assess school personnel bystander action barriers and behaviors in instances of teen DV, SV, and SH.

Young Children's Indiscriminate Helping Behavior Toward a Humanoid Robot

Young children help others in a range of situations, relatively indiscriminate of the characteristics of those they help. Recent results have suggested that young children's helping behavior extends even to humanoid robots. However, it has been unclear how characteristics of robots would influence children's helping behavior. Considering previous findings suggesting that certain robot features influence adults' perception of and their behavior toward robots, the question arises of whether young children's behavior and perception would follow the same principles. The current study investigated whether two key characteristics of a humanoid robot (animate autonomy and friendly expressiveness) would affect children's instrumental helping behavior and their perception of the robot as an animate being. Eighty-two 3-year-old children participated in one of four experimental conditions manipulating a robot's ostensible animate autonomy (high/low) and friendly expressiveness (friendly/neutral). Helping was assessed in an out-of-reach task and animacy ratings were assessed in a post-test interview. Results suggested that both children's helping behavior, as well as their perception of the robot as animate, were unaffected by the robot's characteristics. The findings indicate that young children's helping behavior extends largely indiscriminately across two important characteristics. These results increase our understanding of the development of children's altruistic behavior and animate-inanimate distinctions. Our findings also raise important ethical questions for the field of child-robot interaction.

First steps toward an understanding of procedural fairness

In four experiments, we tested whether 20-month-old infants are sensitive to violations of procedural impartiality. Participants were shown videos in which help was provided in two different ways. A main character provided help to two other agents either impartially, by helping them at the same time, or in a biased way, by helping one agent almost immediately while the other after a longer delay. Infants looked reliably longer at the biased than at the unbiased help scenarios despite the fact that in both scenarios help was provided to each beneficiary. This suggests that human infants can attend to departures from impartiality and, in their second year, they already show an initial understanding of procedural fairness.

To Help or To Harm? Assessing the Impact of Envy on Prosocial and Antisocial Behaviors

Two studies examined how envy influences prosocial and antisocial behavior. In Experiment 1, participants in an envious state (relative to a neutral state) were less helpful: They picked up fewer dropped pencils in their immediate vicinity. We expanded upon these findings by examining how envy affected both helping and harming behavior in a competitive scenario. In Experiment 2, individuals in envious or neutral states assigned puzzle tasks to another student in a prisoner's dilemma style scenario. Prosocial and antisocial behaviors were assessed via the difficulty of the assigned puzzles (easy puzzles were considered helpful and difficult puzzles were harmful). We hypothesized that experiencing envy would result in greater motive to harm as well as greater likelihood of engaging in harmful behavior. The hypothesis was supported, suggesting that envy has detrimental ramifications that go beyond the individual and extend to interpersonal relationships.

Functional support and burden among out-of-home supporters of heart failure patients with and without depression

OBJECTIVE

Over 20% of patients with heart failure (HF) experience clinical depression, which is associated with higher rates of mortality, morbidity, and hospitalization. Support from family members or friends (whom we refer to as care partners [CPs]) can lower the risk of these outcomes. We examined whether HF patients with depression received assistance from CPs living outside of their homes. Further, we examined whether patient depression was associated with support-related strain among out-of-home CPs.

METHOD

We analyzed baseline survey data from 348 HF patients with reduced ejection fraction and their CPs. Patients with scores on the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale-10 (Kohout, Berkman, Evans, & Cornoni-Huntley, 1993) of ≥10 were classified as having clinically significant depressive symptoms (i.e., depression). Outcomes included CP-reported hr per week helping with health care and talking with patients via telephone and scores on the Modified Caregiver Strain Index. Negative binomial regression models examined differences in the amount of in-person and telephone support for patients with and without depression, controlling for patients' comorbidities, living alone, CP geographic distance, and CP emotional closeness to the patient.

RESULTS

CPs provided more in-person support to HF patients with depression (M = 3.64 hr) compared with those without depression (M = 2.60 hr per week, incident rate ratio [IRR] = 1.40, p = .019). CPs provided more telephone support to patients with depression (M = 3.02 hr) compared with those without depression (M = 2.09 hr per week, IRR = 1.42, p < .001). Patient depression had no effect on caregiver burden (IRR = 1.00, p = .843).

CONCLUSION

Patients with clinically significant depressive symptoms receive more in-person assistance and telephonic support from CPs. Despite that additional contact, caregiver burden was not greater among the supporters of depressed patients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Spontaneous helping behavior of autistic and non-autistic (Pre-)adolescents: A matter of motivation?

Young autistic people have a range of social difficulties, but it is not yet clear how these difficulties can be explained. In addition, emerging research is suggesting that autistic girls may differ from boys in terms of their social behaviors, but yet unknown is if they differ in terms of their pro-social behavior, such as helping. The present study investigated spontaneous helping behavior using an in vivo paradigm and related this to participants' levels of social motivation (based on parent reports). Participants were 233 autistic and non-autistic (pre-)adolescents (M = 12.46 years, SD = 15.54 months). Our results demonstrated that autistic girls and boys have lower levels of social motivation compared to their non-autistic peers, but social motivation was unrelated to helping behavior in both groups. Furthermore, when the experimenter needed help, the autistic boys and girls looked and smiled to the same extent as their peers of the same gender, but they actually helped significantly less than their non-autistic peers. However, most autistic youngsters did help, highlighting the great individual differences in autistic individuals. We discuss the possibility that lower levels of helping behavior are due to difficulty initiating action in a social context, rather than lower social motivation. Autism Res 2019, 12: 1796-1804. © 2019 The Authors. Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: This study examined the helping behavior of autistic boys and girls (aged 9-16). Many autistic young people did help, but compared to non-autistic individuals, autistic people did not help as much. This study also showed that when people did/did not help, it was not related to their interest in social relationships. It is important to teach young autistic people when and how to help others, to support them making friends.

Chimpanzees help others with what they want; children help them with what they need

Humans, including young children, are strongly motivated to help others, even paying a cost to do so. Humans' nearest primate relatives, great apes, are likewise motivated to help others, raising the question of whether the motivations of humans and apes are the same. Here we compared the underlying motivation to help in human children and chimpanzees. Both species understood the situation and helped a conspecific in a straightforward situation. However, when helpers knew that what the other was requesting would not actually help her, only children gave her what she needed instead of giving her what she requested. These results suggest that both chimpanzees and human children help others but the underlying motivation for why they help differs. In comparison to chimpanzees, young children help in a paternalistic manner. The evolutionary hypothesis is that uniquely human socio-ecologies based on interdependent cooperation gave rise to uniquely human prosocial motivations to help others paternalistically.

Reciprocal Trading of Different Commodities in Norway Rats

The prevalence of reciprocal cooperation in non-human animals is hotly debated [1, 2]. Part of this dispute rests on the assumption that reciprocity means paying like with like [3]. However, exchanges between social partners may involve different commodities and services. Hitherto, there is no experimental evidence that animals other than primates exchange different commodities among conspecifics based on the decision rules of direct reciprocity. Here, we show that Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) apply direct reciprocity rules when exchanging two different social services: food provisioning and allogrooming. Focal rats were made to experience partners either cooperating or non-cooperating in one of the two commodities. Afterward, they had the opportunity to reciprocate favors by the alternative service. Test rats traded allogrooming against food provisioning, and vice versa, thereby acting by the rules of direct reciprocity. This might indicate that reciprocal altruism among non-human animals is much more widespread than currently assumed.

Effects of Rejection by a Friend for Someone Else on Emotions and Behavior

Studies show that rejection increases negative affect and aggression and decreases helping behavior toward the excluder. Less is known about emotions and behavior after rejection by a friend for someone else. In two experimental studies (N = 101 and N = 169), we tested the predictions that rejection would feel worse in a close relationship but would result in less aggression and more reconnecting behavior, especially when the reasons for rejection were unknown. The results of Study 1 showed that, as expected, among acquaintances, more aggression was noted only after comparative rejection, but among strangers, aggression was also observed after rejection with no stated reason. Negative feelings toward a new acquaintance were only marginally stronger than those toward a stranger in Study 1, but Study 2 confirmed that rejection by a best friend, and especially comparative rejection by a friend, felt worse than other conditions. Study 2 also showed that reconnecting behavior was more likely to dominate over aggressive behavior between people in close relationships than between strangers. The results are discussed mostly in light of the multimotive model of rejection.

Toddlers and infants expect individuals to refrain from helping an ingroup victim's aggressor

Adults and older children are more likely to punish a wrongdoer for a moral transgression when the victim belongs to their group. Building on these results, in violation-of-expectation experiments (n = 198), we examined whether 2.5-year-old toddlers (Exps. 1 and 2) and 1-year-old infants (Exps. 3 and 4) would selectively expect an individual in a minimal group to engage in third-party punishment (TPP) for harm to an ingroup victim. We focused on an indirect form of TPP, the withholding of help. To start, children saw a wrongdoer steal a toy from a victim while a bystander watched. Next, the wrongdoer needed assistance with a task, and the bystander either helped or hindered her. The group memberships of the wrongdoer and the victim were varied relative to that of the bystander and were marked with either novel labels (Exps. 1 and 2) or novel outfits (Exps. 3 and 4). When the victim belonged to the same group as the bystander, children expected TPP: At both ages, they detected a violation when the bystander chose to help the wrongdoer. Across experiments, this effect held whether the wrongdoer belonged to the same group as the bystander and the victim or to a different group; it was eliminated when the victim belonged to a different group than the bystander, when groups were not marked, and when either no theft occurred or the wrongdoer was unaware of the theft. Toddlers and infants thus expect individuals to refrain from helping an ingroup victim's aggressor, providing further evidence for an early-emerging expectation of ingroup support.