The Development of Generosity From 4 to 6 Years: Examining Stability and the Biopsychosocial Contributions of Children’s Vagal Flexibility and Mothers’ Compassion

Abstract

Individual differences in children's prosocial behaviors, including their willingness to give up something of value for the benefit of others, are rooted in physiological and environmental processes. In a sample of 4-year-old children, we previously found evidence that flexible changes in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) were linked to donation behavior, and that these physiological patterns may support greater sensitivity to the positive effects of compassionate parenting on donation behavior. The current study focused on a follow-up assessment of these children at age 6. First, we examined the stability of individual differences in donation behavior and related parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity from age 4 to 6. Second, we examined associations between donation behavior and RSA at 6 years. Third, we examined whether the association between children's RSA and donation behavior at age 6 varied depending on mothers' compassionate love. We found low to modest stability in donation behavior and RSA reactivity from age 4 to 6. These findings provide preliminary evidence that stable individual differences in altruism, as reflected by generosity, and in some aspects of parasympathetic functioning during opportunities to be prosocial, emerge in childhood. In addition, we found that some of the same associations between donation behavior, RSA, and compassionate love that we previously observed in children at 4 years of age continued to be evident 2 years later at age 6. Greater decreases in RSA when given the opportunity to donate were associated with children donating more of their own resources which, in turn, were associated with greater RSA recovery after the task. Lastly, mothers' compassionate love was positively associated with donation behavior in children who demonstrated stronger decreases in RSA during the task; compassionate parenting and RSA reactivity may serve as external and internal supports for prosociality that build on each other. Taken together, these findings contribute to the perspectives that individual differences in altruistic behaviors are intrinsically linked to healthy vagal flexibility, and that biopsychosocial approaches provide a useful framework for examining and understanding the environmental and physiological processes underlying these individual differences.

Compassion: From Its Evolution to a Psychotherapy

“…Unlike compassion, this definition of altruism excludes the concepts of sharing or acts that focus on the flourishing and well-being of others or "general caring. " Helping people that does not have a cost or can actually benefit oneself in the long term is questionable as to how altruistic-compassionate it is (Colqhoun et al, 2020;Miller et al, 2020). Clearly, the ultimate benefit of kin-caring is the flourishing of one's genes in the next generation, sometimes called inclusive fitness.…”

Health benefits valuation in three‐generation households—the role of reciprocity

“…Stark (1999) has postulated a three-generation model of interfamily transfers in which adult children provide financial support to their elderly parents because they expect their offspring to imitate that behavior later. The mirror effect of a child mimicking a behavior previously exhibited by a parent has been observed by Miller et al (2020), with a mirror effect for prosocial behaviors being present even in childhood.…”

A meta‐analysis of mother–child synchrony in respiratory sinus arrhythmia and contextual risk

“…We did not find that epoch length significantly moderated synchrony, but systematically testing this possibility may require more studies that consider RSA estimates that are based on smaller time intervals. Some developmental studies have used epochs as short as 10 or 15 s to compute RSA (Calkins & Dedmon, 2000;Huffman et al, 1998;Kahle et al, 2018;Miller et al, 2020). Recent analytic approaches can estimate RSA at the second-by-second level, although it is worth noting that these estimates are still based on a sliding window method that considers a wider range of data (Gates et al, 2015).…”