The early development of prosocial behavior has become a major topic in developmental psychology. Although findings on the early presence of prosocial tendencies in infants and toddlers have received much attention and the examination of their subsequent developmental pathways has fostered ample research, little is known about the mechanisms and motives that bring about the first emergence of these prosocial actions. In this article, I introduce and review theoretical approaches, then evaluate them in light of recent findings. I conclude that the forms of early prosocial behavior are related to different social‐cognitive mechanisms and underpinned by various motives.

This study investigated the development of sharing expectations and sharing behavior in 3 groups of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children. We examined (a) whether preschool children expect a person to share more with a friend than with a disliked peer and (b) whether their expectation about others' sharing behavior depends on whether there is a cost or not. Additionally, (c) we assessed children's own sharing behavior toward the different recipients in the same situation. The results show that expectations about sharing and actual sharing follow similar developmental pathways and that recipient-dependent sharing and sharing expectations emerge around 4 years of age. Moreover, individual-level analyses provide evidence that by 5 years of age, children's own sharing and their expectations of others' sharing are closely related to each other.

The present study investigates the contribution of 2 mechanisms to imitation in infancy. The principle of rational action suggests that infants normatively evaluate the efficiency of observed actions. In contrast, it has been proposed that motor resonance (i.e., the mapping of others' actions onto one's own motor repertoire) plays a central role in imitation. This study tested 14-month-old infants (n = 95) in 5 conditions and manipulated the extent to which the observed actions could be matched onto the infants' own motor repertoire as well as whether the observed behavior appeared to be efficient. The results suggest that motor resonance plays a more central role in imitation in infancy than does a rational evaluation of the observed action.

Recent studies have provided evidence that young children already engage in sharing behavior. The underlying social-cognitive mechanisms, however, are still under debate. In particular, it is unclear whether or not young children’s sharing is motivated by an appreciation of others’ wealth. Manipulating the material needs of recipients in a sharing task (Experiment 1) and a resource allocation task (Experiment 2), we show that 5- but not 3-year-old children share more with poor than wealthy individuals. The 3-year-old children even showed a tendency to behave less selfishly towards the rich, yet not the poor recipient. This suggests that very early instances of sharing behavior are not motivated by a consideration of others’ material needs. Moreover, the results show that 5-year-old children were rather inclined to give more to the poor individual than distributing the resources equally, demonstrating that their wish to support the poor overruled the otherwise very prominent inclination to share resources equally. This indicates that charity has strong developmental roots in preschool children.

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