Children’s early helping in action: Piagetian developmental theory and early prosocial behavior

Abstract

After a brief overview of recent research on early helping, outlining some central problems, and issues, this paper examines children’s early helping through the lens of Piagetian moral and developmental theory, drawing on Piaget’s “Moral Judgment of the Child” (Piaget, 1932/1997), “Play, Dreams, and Imitation in Childhood” (Piaget, 1945/1951), and the “Grasp of Consciousness” (Piaget, 1976). Piaget refers to a level of moral development in action that precedes heteronomous and autonomous moral reasoning. This action level allows children to begin to interact with people and objects. In his later work, Piaget explores the gradual construction of understanding from this activity level. Taken together, these elements of Piagetian theory provide a promising conceptual framework for understanding the development of early helping.

Toddlers Involve Their Caregiver to Help Another Person in Need

“…The findings inform the recent theoretical debate on the motivational basis subserving early instances of prosocial behavior (e.g., Carpendale et al., ; Dahl et al., ; Davidov et al., ; Dunfield, ; Hammond, ; Paulus, ). In particular, it has been doubted that young children really engage in prosocial action with the motivation to see someone helped.…”

“…In the course of early development, the tendency to act altruistically shows a marked increase (Knafo & Plomin, ; Svetlova et al., ). Given the widespread interest, different theoretical approaches have attempted to account for these phenomena (for discussions, see Carpendale, Hammond, & Atwood, ; Cortes Barragan & Dweck, ; Dahl, Campos, & Witherington, ; Dunfield, ; Hammond, ; Hay, ; Martin & Olson, ; Paulus, ).…”

Is young children’s helping affected by helpees’ need? Preschoolers, but not infants selectively help needy others

“…Overall, these results indicate that infants' helping behavior is based on responding to signals in social interactions. The pattern of findings is in line with views that infants' helping behavior emerges out of established action routines (Dahl, 2015;Hammond, 2014), and could be driven by a social motivation to interact with others (Carpendale et al, 2015;Paulus, 2014).…”

Why be moral? Children's explicit motives for prosocial-moral action

“…This finding is reminiscent of the Piagetian notion that children's moral development starts from morality in action and later becomes cognitively (re)constructed (cf. Hammond, 2014 ).…”

“…Piaget ( 1932/1999 ) maintained that moral development in action precedes the forms of heteronomous and autonomous morality he observed at later developmental periods (cf. Carpendale, 2009 ; Hammond, 2014 ). Thus, the intrinsic nature of moral motivation found in young children may not be a dominant feature throughout the course of development.…”