From cleaning up to helping out: Parental socialization and children's early prosocial behavior

Pettygrove, Dana M.; Hammond, Stuart I.; Karahuta, Erin; Waugh, Whitney E.; Brownell, Celia A.

doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2013.09.005

Cited by 64 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 14 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…For example, a recent study (Pettygrove et al, 2013) investigated the relation between parental socialization and prosocial behavior by giving 18- and 30-month olds the opportunity to help, share, and comfort in response to increasingly explicit cues to the experimenter’s negative state. Additionally, parental socialization techniques were coded while the parent and child interacted in a different but related task.…”

Section: Prosocial Behavior As Helping Sharing and Comforting Subtypesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A construct divided: prosocial behavior as helping, sharing, and comforting subtypes

2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The development and maintenance of prosocial, other-oriented behaviors has been of considerable recent interest. Though it is clear that prosocial behaviors emerge early and play a uniquely important role in the social lives of humans, there is less consensus regarding the mechanisms that underlie and maintain these fundamental acts. The goal of this paper is to clarify inconsistencies in our understanding of the early emergence and development of prosocial behavior by proposing a taxonomy of prosocial behavior anchored in the social-cognitive constraints that underlie the ability to act on behalf of others. I will argue that within the general domain of prosocial behavior, other-oriented actions can be categorized into three distinct types (helping, sharing, and comforting) that reflect responses to three distinct negative states (instrumental need, unmet material desire, and emotional distress). In support of this proposal, I will demonstrate that the three varieties of prosocial behavior show unique ages of onset, uncorrelated patterns of production, and distinct patterns of individual differences. Importantly, by differentiating specific varieties of prosocial behavior within the general category, we can begin to explain inconsistencies in the past literature and provide a framework for directing future research into the ontogenetic origins of these essential social behaviors.

show abstract

Section: Prosocial Behavior As Helping Sharing and Comforting Subtypesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A construct divided: prosocial behavior as helping, sharing, and comforting subtypes

2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Warm and sensitive responding to a child's needs has been established as a robust contributor to empathic concern and prosocial behavior in 1- and 2-year-olds (Zahn-Waxler and Radke-Yarrow, 1990; Zahn-Waxler et al, 1992; Moreno et al, 2008) and has been shown to predict the trajectory of prosocial behavior into childhood (Robinson et al, 1994). Parents also socialize prosociality by scaffolding their children's participation in everyday household tasks and chores (Rheingold, 1982), which is associated with greater toddler helping and sharing in subsequent prosocial tasks (Hammond, 2011; Pettygrove et al, 2013). …”

Section: Here There and Everywhere: Emotion And Mental State Talk Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

Here, there and everywhere: emotion and mental state talk in different social contexts predicts empathic helping in toddlers

et al. 2014

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A growing body of literature suggests that parents socialize early-emerging prosocial behavior across varied contexts and in subtle yet powerful ways. We focus on discourse about emotions and mental states as one potential socialization mechanism given its conceptual relevance to prosocial behavior and its known positive relations with emotion understanding and social-cognitive development, as well as parents' frequent use of such discourse beginning in infancy. Specifically, we ask how parents' emotion and mental state talk (EMST) with their toddlers relates to toddlers' helping and how these associations vary by context. Children aged 18- to 30-months (n = 38) interacted with a parent during book reading and joint play with toys, two everyday contexts that afford parental discussion of emotions and mental states. Children also participated in instrumental and empathic helping tasks. Results revealed that although parents discuss mental states with their children in both contexts, the nature of their talk differs: during book reading parents labeled emotions and mental states significantly more often than during joint play, especially simple affect words (e.g., happy, sad) and explanations or elaborations of emotions; whereas they used more desire talk and mental state words (e.g., think, know) in joint play. Parents' emotion and mental state discourse related to children's empathic, emotion-based helping behavior; however, it did not relate to instrumental, action-based helping. Moreover, relations between parent talk and empathic helping varied by context: children who helped more quickly had parents who labeled emotion and mental states more often during joint play and who elicited this talk more often during book reading. As EMST both varies between contexts and exhibits context-specific associations with empathic prosocial behavior early in development, we conclude that such discourse may be a key form of socialization in emerging prosociality.

show abstract

“…Instead, Piaget largely focused on the power structure of these interactions, in so far as these promoted obligation or mutual respect (Moessinger, 2008). These structural issues may be important in terms of the quality of parent-child interactions, such as scaffolding, which may provide a route to explaining individual differences in children’s helping (Pettygrove et al, 2013). Nevertheless, Piaget’s writing on early moral development leaves room for profound parental influences on children’s early helping activities, as parents socialize and introduce the child to a variety of different practices (Grusec et al, 2013).…”

Section: Differentiating Help: Future Directions Of Children’s Early mentioning

confidence: 99%

Childrenâ€™s early helping in action: Piagetian developmental theory and early prosocial behavior

Hammond

2014

Front. Psychol.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

From cleaning up to helping out: Parental socialization and children's early prosocial behavior

Cited by 64 publications

References 14 publications

A construct divided: prosocial behavior as helping, sharing, and comforting subtypes

A construct divided: prosocial behavior as helping, sharing, and comforting subtypes

Here, there and everywhere: emotion and mental state talk in different social contexts predicts empathic helping in toddlers

Childrenâ€™s early helping in action: Piagetian developmental theory and early prosocial behavior

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About