Individual Differences in Toddlers’ Prosociality: Experiences in Early Relationships Explain Variability in Prosocial Behavior

Abstract

Latent class logistic regression analysis was used to investigate sources of individual differences in profiles of prosocial behavior. Eighty-seven 18-month-olds were observed in tasks assessing sharing with a neutral adult, instrumentally helping a neutral adult, and instrumentally helping a sad adult. Maternal mental state language (MSL) and maternal sensitivity were also assessed. Despite differing motivational demands across tasks, we found consistency in children's prosocial behavior with three latent classes: no prosocial behavior, moderate prosocial behavior, and frequent instrumental helping across emotional situations. Maternal sensitivity, MSL, and their interaction predicted toddlers' membership in the classes. These findings evidence moderate consistency in early prosocial behaviors and suggest that these capacities are motivated in early relationships with caregivers.

The multidimensional nature of early prosocial behavior: a motivational perspective

“…Two studies found moderate consistency across some prosocial behaviors even in 12-and 18-month-old infants [24][25]. In one study [24], 18-month-old infants were presented with a sharing task and two kinds of instrumental helping tasks (one without emotional cues and one with emotional cues).…”

“…In one study [24], 18-month-old infants were presented with a sharing task and two kinds of instrumental helping tasks (one without emotional cues and one with emotional cues). There were some correlations, most strongly between the different instrumental helping tasks.…”

The Motivational Foundations of Prosocial Behavior From A Developmental Perspective–Evolutionary Roots and Key Psychological Mechanisms: Introduction to the Special Section

“…Another socialization pathway likely involves caregiver–child conversations about others’ emotions and mental states. Such interactions, beginning as early as the 2nd year of life, have been linked to children's prosocial responses to others in distress, even at a cost to the self, possibly mediated by children's better understanding of emotions (Brownell, Svetlova, Anderson, Nichols, & Drummond, ; see also Newton et al., , discussed below).…”

“…Given the many forms of prosociality, a question that has attracted much interest is whether different prosocial behaviors cluster together to form a dispositional core, or conversely—are they distinct and differentiated, even unrelated to one another? Perhaps not surprisingly (given the complexity noted above), the answer appears to be “both.” Thus, there is evidence in the developmental literature of both differentiation between distinct forms of prosociality (e.g., Dunfield & Kuhlmeier, ; Dunfield, Kuhlmeier, O'Connell, & Kelley, ; Paulus, Kühn‐Popp, Licata, Sodian, & Meinhardt, ; see also Carlo, ) and evidence for a degree of convergence between different forms of prosociality (e.g., Eisenberg et al., ; Knafo‐Noam, Uzefovsky, Israel, Davidov, & Zahn‐waxler, ; Mayseless, ; Newton, Thompson, & Goodman, ). Moreover, whether different forms of prosocial behavior converge or diverge also depends on the features of the methodology being employed to measure those behaviors (Thompson & Newton, ).…”

Rethinking the Relationship between Social Experience and False-Belief Understanding: A Mentalistic Account

“…Although additional research is needed to determine the causal mechanism behind this relationship, these findings are consistent with the notion that children who frequently engage in conversations about others’ thoughts and beliefs more readily attend to belief-relevant information within a scene and more quickly retrieve an agent’s false belief when necessary. These results suggest that parental use of mental-state language is related to false-belief performance prior to the preschool years, and that this relationship extends to non-elicited-response false-belief tasks (for related evidence see Johnson et al, 2007; Taumoepeau and Ruffman, 2008; Newton et al, in press). …”