The Relationship of Preschoolers' Reasoning about Prosocial Moral Conflicts to Prosocial Behavior

Neural correlates of prosocial behavior in infancy: Different neurophysiological mechanisms support the emergence of helping and comforting

“…Yet, low cost instrumental helping did not predict later prosocial behavior. The authors suggest that helping is less other-oriented than other forms of prosocial behavior and therefore not predictive for the developmental of prosocial behavior (see also Eisenberg-Berg and Hand, 1979). Our neurophysiological data support this assertion as they show no relationship between frontal resting state EEG asymmetry measure, which were related to empathic behavior in the comforting task, and infants' competent instrumental helping behavior.…”

How 18- and 24-month-old peers divide resources among themselves

“…This is apparent both in natural observations in which preschool children are mostly reluctant to share their toys with others (e.g., Eisenberg-Berg & Hand, 1979;Levitt, Weber, Clark, & McDonnell, 1985;McGuire, Manke, Eftekhari, & Dunn, 2000) and in experimental situations resembling a dictator game in which preschool donators across many different cultures tend to keep the majority of resources for themselves (e.g., Benenson, Pascoe, & Radmore, 2007;Blake & Rand, 2010;Fehr, Bernhard, & Rockenbach, 2008;Rochat et al, 2009;Thompson, Barresi, & Moore, 1997). This is despite the fact that, when asked, 3-year-olds explicitly endorse the principle of egalitarianism (Smith, Blake, & Harris, 2013).…”

A Measure of Cognitive and Affective Empathy in Children Using Parent Ratings

“…Prior to about 8 years, children lack the cognitive and/or verbal abilities to report on internal states. For older children, their reports of affective empathy and their scores on picture-story indices still do not converge with their prosocial behavior [7] and are heavily affected by demand characteristics [15] or other factors such as gender of the experimenter [16]. Laboratory-based stimuli and coding systems have advantages but are expensive and not suited to larger community studies, and thus the lack of parent report measures is most surprising.…”