Preschoolers' Helping Motivations: Altruistic, Egoistic or Diverse?

Abstract

Based on Eisenberg et al.'s model of prosocial motivations, the present study examined what motivates preschoolers to display instrumental helping and how various motivations develop during the preschool years. The participants were 477 preschoolers aged 3–5 years assigned to one of five groups. In each experimental group, the experimenter emphasized an altruistic or egoistic helping motivation, namely, empathic concern, moral rules, praise or rewards. In the control group, no helping motivations were emphasized. Their instrumental helping was then measured by sorting cards for a sick child to play a game. The results show that each helping motivation had a positive effect on instrumental helping. Most of the motivational effects were similar across age, but the motivational effect of empathic concern increased obviously at the age of 5 years. Therefore, the present study reveals that both altruistic and egoistic motivations motivate preschoolers to help others. Most of the motivations develop steadily during the preschool years, but empathic concern as an altruistic motivation increases greatly at the end of the preschool years. The present study thus confirms the diversity of preschoolers' helping motivations with Eisenberg et al.'s model of prosocial motivations.

Multidimensional profiles of head start preschoolers’ moral self-concept predict subsequent, but not concurrent, aggression

“…We believe this age difference is meaningful in terms of both social and cognitive development. At this age, children may not have yet fully internalized the socialization required to ingrain helping behaviors as moral (Hao & Dong, 2021;Malti et al, 2009). Children at a younger age may be more sensitive to others' negative emotions in social interactions, in that they are more likely and willing to comfort others when they feel sad or provide socioemotional support (Spinard et al, 2022).…”

Why help others? Insights from rodent to human early childhood research

“…They proposed that empathy and adherence to personal norms such as fairness and equality are altruistic motivations, while raising self-esteem, reducing aversion, receiving praise and rewards, and avoiding punishment are egoistic motivations. Building on this model, Hao and Du (2021) conducted an experiment investigating the instrumental helping behavior of preschool children through tasks that involved arranging cards for sick peers. Their study demonstrated that empathy, compliance with moral rules, receiving praise, and rewards can all promote preschool children’s helping behavior, indicating the diversity of their motivations.…”

Conditional prosociality in development: deconstructing social and materialistic factors that modulate early prosocial behavior

“…"), and rewards ("If you help, I will give you stickers."). Each helping motivation increased children's persistence on the helping task relative to a control condition where the experimenter did not emphasize any helping motivation, but the motivational effect of sympathetic concern increased significantly at five years old (Hao & Du, 2021). Given that the preschoolers in our study were aged five to six years old, it is likely that sympathy influenced them to help the victim who expressed distress at having her tower destroyed.…”

“…Furthermore, sympathetic concern as a motivation for helping was found to increase significantly at five years old. In a study by Hao and Du (2021), three-to five-year-olds were asked to help a sick child sort out some game cards. The experimenter emphasized different motivations for helping the sick child, including sympathetic concern ("The sick child is very miserable.…”