Getting help for others: An examination of indirect helping in young children.

Abstract

When young children recruit others to help a person in need, media reports often treat it as a remarkable event. Yet it is unclear how commonly children perform this type of prosocial behavior and what forms of social understanding, cognitive abilities, and motivational factors promote or discourage it. In this study, 48 3-to 4-year-old children could choose between two actors to retrieve an out-of-reach object for a third person; during this event, one actor was physically unable to provide help. Nearly all of children's responses appropriately incorporated the actors' action capacities, indicating that rational prosocial reasoningthe cognitive basis for effective indirect helpingis common at this young age. However, only half of children actually directed an actor to help, suggesting that additional motivational factors constrained their prosocial actions. A behavioral measure of social inhibition and within-task scaffolding that increased children's personal involvement were both strongly associated with children's initiation of indirect helping behavior. These results highlight social inhibition and recognizing one's own potential agency as key motivational challenges that children must overcome to recruit help for others.Ashley Edgson was the dispatcher who took Dane's 911 call. She said she was amazed at the five-year-old's composure. "He was brave, he was so calm, he knew exactly what his address was. A lot of people get frantic, and he was able to say everything and answer all the questions clearly and accurately."Dane never lost sight of why he called 911 and how serious the situation was. "I was thinking, 'I hope my mom is going to be OK'." (Campbell, 2016)

The roles of temperamental inhibition in affective and cognitive empathy in Chinese toddlers

“…Behavioral inhibition (BI), a temperamental trait characterized by high negative affect and withdrawal behaviors to novel and challenging situations in infancy and toddlerhood, has been generally considered a primary precursor of low social competence (Fox, Henderson, Marshall, Nichols, & Ghera, 2005). Children who are highly inhibited are more likely to display social withdrawal and reticence during peer interactions (Pérez-Edgar et al, 2011;Rubin, Burgess, & Hastings, 2002), present less cooperative and prosocial behavior (Karasewich, Kuhlmeier, Beier, & Dunfield, 2018;Laible et al, 2017;Stanhope, Bell, & Parker-Cohen, 1987), and experience increased risk for internalizing behaviors and anxiety (Clauss & Blackford, 2012;Putnam & Stifter, 2005;Schwartz, Snidman, & Kagan, 1999;Williams et al, 2009). In addition, research has demonstrated that higher BI is linked to lower empathy, which is an important social competence that supports the understanding of others' emotional and mental states and aids in navigating social behaviors (Eisenberg, Spinrad, Taylor, & Liew, 2019;Liew et al, 2011;Young, Fox, & Zahn-Waxler, 1999).…”

The effect of emotional communication on infants' distinct prosocial behaviors

“…Although some studies have shown that displays of caring and concern emerge as early as 8-10 months and gradually increase across the second year of life (e.g., Roth-Hanania, Davidov, & Zahn-Waxler, 2011), these studies rarely differentiate among different forms of prosocial behavior. For example, the seminal work by Zahn-Waxler and colleagues included different codes for instrumental, emotional, and indirect helping (Roth-Hanania et al, 2011;Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, & King, 1979;Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, et al, 1992;Zahn-Waxler, Robinson, & Emde, 1992), and similar distinctions have also been noted by other researchers (e.g., Dunfield et al, 2011;Fabes, Eisenberg, Karbon, Troyer, & Switzer, 1994;Karasewich, Kuhlmeier, Beier, & Dunfield, 2019). However, despite distinguishing between functionally distinct forms of prosocial behavior in their coding, prior research often collapses these behaviors into a more general "helping" behavior, which may obscure important distinctions in how infants help and in what contexts.…”

“…Furthermore, the few studies that have examined distinct forms of infant prosocial behavior have often done so by tailoring a specific context to be addressed (Dunfield, 2014;Dunfield et al, 2011;Karasewich et al, 2019;Svetlova et al, 2010). For example, infant helping when the experimenter has an instrumental need is deemed instrumental helping.…”

“…Infants observed in the home typically help just over once per hour and the majority of helping behaviors (68%) are preceded by adult encouragement (Dahl, 2015). Likewise, laboratory studies typically include explicit instructions at some point in the procedure to elicit infant helping (e.g., Brownell et al, 2013;Karasewich et al, 2019), and some classic studies that did not include such cues observed rates of infant prosocial behavior ranging from 10% to 52% (e.g., Roth-Hanania et al, 2011;Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, et al, 1992). Furthermore, as reviewed in the introduction, it is common for studies to specifically tailor the context to elicit prosocial behavior (e.g., Dunfield et al, 2011;Svetlova et al, 2010).…”

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

“…These findings point to the role of socialization in the early emergence of helping (for reviews see Brownell et al, 2016;Dahl, 2018) and suggest that by the end of the second year, helping behavior is an established routine. When they are prevented from helping themselves, 2.5-year-old toddlers (but not 1.5-to 2-year-olds) systematically involve their own caregivers to help a needy other (Paulus et al, 2017; see also Karasevich, Kuhlmeier, Beier, & Dunfield, 2018), indicating a motivation to see others being helped. Similarly, by 2 years toddlers show signs of proactive helping, that is, help spontaneously by putting an object back on a table without being requested to do so (Warneken, 2013).…”