Development of Cooperation & Prosocial Behavior

Question 1

4 potential explanations to why the child open the cabinet?

Answer 1

• Exploring?
• Action script?
• Goal fulfilment?
• Prosocial?

Question 2

Prosocial Behavior Overview? 4 main topics

Answer 2

1. The Development of Prosocial Behavior
2. Eisenberg’s Stages of Prosocial Behavior
3. Socialising Prosocial Behavior
4. Individual Differences in Prosocial Behavior

Question 3

Key Concepts - Cooperation (from of prosocial behaviour)? (3)

Answer 3

1. Is directed towards helping another
2. Involves a risk or sacrifice to the actor
3. Is voluntary

Question 4

Prosocial Behaviour? Adults and development

Answer 4

• Adults generally want children to help others for altruistic motives
• These motives initially include empathy or sympathy for others and, at later ages, the desire to act in ways consistent with one’s own conscience and moral principles

Question 5

Prosocial Behaviour? Two main concepts

Answer 5

The origins of altruistic prosocial behaviour are rooted in the capacity to feel empathy and sympathy.

• Empathy, is an emotional reaction to another’s emotional state that is similar to that person’s state
• Sympathy, is the feeling of concern for another person (or animal) in reaction to the other’s emotional sate or condition (by 2 years old)

Question 6

Prosocial Behavior - What is an important factor contributing to empathy and sympathy?

Answer 6

The ability to take another’s perspective
- At about age 2, children start to more clearly differentiate between another’s emotional distress and their own, although their responses may still be egocentric
- 2-3 years of age, the frequency and variety of young children’s prosocial behaviours increase, although they do not regularly act in prosocial ways
- Children’s prosocial behaviours increase form the preschool years though adolescence

Question 7

Eisenberg’s Stages of Prosocial Behavior?

Answer 7

• Prosocial Moral Dilemmas are used to determine prosocial behaviour (voluntary behaviour intended to benefit another, such as helping, sharing, and providing comfort)
• To study the development of prosocial moral development, Eisenberg presented children with stories in which the characters must choose between helping others and meeting their own needs.
• Identified fie stages of prosocial moral reasoning similar to Kohlberg’s stages

Question 8

Prosocial Judgement, Level 1?

Answer 8

Level 1: Hedonistic, self-focused orientation
- Concerned with own interests
- Pre-school age

Question 9

Prosocial Judgement, Level 2?

Answer 9

Level 2: Needs-based orientation
- Concerned with others’ needs even when they conflict with own needs
- Some pre-school and elementary school ages

Question 10

Prosocial Judgement, Level 3?

Answer 10

Level 3: Approval and/or stereotyped orientation
- Decision to help based on ideas of “good” and “bad”
- Elementary school age

Question 11

Prosocial Judgement, Level 4a?

Answer 11

Level 4a: Self-reflective empathic orientation
- Sympathetic responsiveness or role-taking; concern for others’ humanness
- Older elementary school and high school age

Question 12

Prosocial Judgement, Level 4b?

Answer 12

Level 4b: Transitional level
- Internalise values, norms, responsibilities, concern for larger society -> doing this more consistently but not strong convictions

Question 13

Prosocial Judgement, Level 5?

Answer 13

Level 5: Strongly internalised stage
- Everything is based on values, norms and responsibilities; desire to maintain obligations and improve society; belief in dignity of all individuals
- Passionately belief in cultural values

Question 14

Environmental Factors effect on prosocial behviour?

Answer 14

• Supportive and constructive parenting is related to higher prosocial behavior
• Physical punishments, threats, and authorial parenting are related to lower sympathy and prosocial behavior
• Physical rewards for prosocial behavior or descries motivation later for prosocial behavior if the reward is not present
• Punishment for not using prosocial behavior leads the child to believe the reason for helping is to avoid own punishment

Question 15

Fostering Proscoial Behaviour?

Answer 15

• Discipline involving reasoning fosters voluntary prosocial behavior, especially when the reasoning points out the consequences of the child’s behavior for others
• A primary environmental influence on children’s development of prosocial behaviour is their socialisation in the familiy.
• The values parents convey to their children may influence not only whether children are prosocial, but also toward whom they are prosocial

Question 16

Values Learned from Parents by WWII Jewish Rescuers and Bysterades?

Answer 16

• The people who stood up and did something repotted being taught caring to a much larger degree
• Parents are differing in the values they teach their children which can have an effective on how their children behave or treat others

Question 17

Other environmental factors, affecting pro-social behaviour?

Answer 17

Television and Video Games
- Most TV and video games have little prosocial content, but children who do watch prosocial TV tend to exhibit this behavior immediately after the show
- The effects are not long lasting, but are increased when parents role play the prosocial behavior seen on TV or provide the child with play material that reinforces the prosocial theme

Question 18

The Development of Prosocial Behaviour

Answer 18

• All children are capable of prosocial behaviours, but children differ in how often they engage in these behaviours and their reasons for doing so

Question 19

Cultural Contributions to prosocial behaviour?

Answer 19

• In more prosocial cultures, children often live in extended families, which may have helped them learn that they were responsible for others and that their helping behaviours was values

Question 20

Cultural Contributions to prosocial behaviour?

Answer 20

• In more prosocial cultures, children often live in extended families, which may have helped them learn that they were responsible for others and that their helping behaviours was values

Question 21

Increasing Prosocial Behaviour?

Answer 21

• Prosocial activities provides children & adolescents with opportunities to experience emotional rewards for helping, to take others; perspectives, and to increase confidence in their ability to help others

Question 22

School-Based Interventions?

Answer 22

• The Child Development Project in the East Bay area of San Francisco, trained teachers to provide opportunities for children to develop a prosocial orientation toward their classmates and the community, with positive results.
• (Structured opportunities for students to interact with their classmates in prosocial ways and increase students interest in others feeling.)
• Initial results indicate increases in prosocial behaviours, decrease in antisocial behaviour, and increases in academic achievement.

Question 23

Individual Differences in Prosocial Behaviour? (genetic factors, temperament)

Answer 23

Genetic factors, contribute to individual differences in the propensity to engage in prosocial behaviours (how much oxitonie out body produces)
- Greater similarity in these behaviours between identical twins than fraternal twins
- Genetic effects on prosocial behaviour may be influxes by differences in temperament (children who are more reactive struggle to be able to respond to others emotions, partly because they are so overwhelmed by their own emotions)

Question 24

Individual Differences: Emotional Regulation?

Answer 24

• Prosocial behaviour and aggression are part of a larger network of behaviour, part of a broaden domain of social competence
• Children who are more socially competent (and display more prosocial behaviour) are able to better regulate your emotions
  -> Importance of learning how to regulate emotions

Question 25

Biology and Socialisation: Their Joint Influence?

Answer 25

• The relation between biology and socialisation is complicated by the fact that parent whose children are antisocial and aggressive often have the same traits and are predisposed to punitive parenting.

Question 26

Two Other, than Eisenberg’s Stages of Prosocial Behavior, Theories of Moral Development?

Answer 26

• Piaget
• Kohlberg

Question 27

Domains of Reasoning?

Answer 27

• Moral judgement, the decisions we make based on notions of what is right and wrong
• Social conventional judgement, customs that allows us to coordinate interactions with people in our communities
• Personal judgements, individual own self-interests in focus

Question 28

___ decisions pertaining to designs of right/wrong

Answer 28

moral jugdements

Question 29

___ decisions pertaining to cushions/conventions intended to coordinate interaction with others (social coordination)

Answer 29

social conventional

Question 30

___ decisions pertaining to actions where individual interests are primary focus

Answer 30

personal judgements

Question 31

Piaget’s Theory

Answer 31

• Piaget described how children’s moral reasoning changes from a rigid acceptance of the dictates and rules of authorities to an appreciation that moral rules are a product of social interaction and hence are modifiable.
  Morality of Constraint -> Transitional Period -> Autonomous morality

Question 32

1. Morality of Constraint, Piaget?

Answer 32

• Characterises the moral reasoning of children who have not yet reached the cognitive stage of concrete operations
• See rules and duties as unchangeable “givens” established by an adult
• What determines whether an action is good or bad is the consequence of the action, not the motive behind it

Question 33

2. Transitional Period, Piaget?

Answer 33

• From about age 7 or 8 to age 10
• Starting to think how the other person will be impacted by their actions, and starting to consider the motives behind the actions
• Because of increased peer interaction, children learn that rules can be constructed by the group
• Increasingly learn to take one another’s perspective, thereby becoming more autonomous in their thinking about moral issues

Question 34

3. Autonomous Morality, Piaget?

Answer 34

• By 11 or 12, moral relativism emerges, with all typically developing children reaching this stage
• Understand that rules can be changed if a group agrees to do so
• Consider fairness and equality among people as important factors in constructing rules
• Consider individuals’ motives when evaluating their crimes

Question 35

Evaluation of Piaget’s Theory?

Answer 35

• Rigidity of time line
  Young children can sometimes consider intentions and disregard adults’ views when judging the morality of some actions, such as hurting others on purpose or by accident

Question 36

Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Judgement, overall?

Answer 36

• Strongly influenced by Piaget, like the stages
• Presented children with hypothetical moral dilemmas and then questioned them about the issues involved in their moral judgements
• Argues that people all over the world got hog these stages in the same order, although they differ with regard to the final stage they attain
• Also contended that levels of cognitive development, especially individuals’ skills in perspective taking, determined their progress though the stages

Question 37

Kohlberg’s Stages, only 3?

Answer 37

Proposed three levels of moral judgement
1. Preconventional: Moral reasoning is self-entered, focusing on getting rewards and avoiding punishments
2. Conventional: Moral reasoning is centred on social relationships
3. Postconventional: Moral reasoning is involved with ideals, focusing on moral principles
Each level involves two stages of moral judgement

Question 38

Stage 1: Preconventional Level, Kohlberg?

Answer 38

Punishment and Obedience Orientation:
- What is seen as right is obedience to authorities
- Fear of punishment and avoidance of punishment
- Does not consider the interests of other or recognise that they differ from her own interest

Question 39

Stage 2: Preconventional Level, Kohlberg?

Answer 39

Instrumental and Exchange Orientation:
- What is in one’s own best interest
- Or involves equal exchange between people (tit-for-tat exchange of benefits), shifting the focus away from oneself “she would die anyway”, coast-benefit analysis “If I do that, than I can’t do this…”

Question 40

Stage 3: Conventional Level, Kohlberg?

Answer 40

Mutual interpersonal expectations, relationships, and interpersonal conformity (“Good girl, nice boy”) Orientation:
- Does what is expected by people who are close to the person or what people generally expect of someone in a given role (e.g., “a son”)
- Being “good” is important in itself and means having good motives, showing concern about others, and maintaining good relationships with others.

Question 41

Stage 4: Conventional Level, Kohlberg?

Answer 41

Social system and Conscience (“Law and Order”) Orientation:
- Focus on fulfilling one’s duties, upholding laws, and contributing to society or one’s group.
- Motivated to keep the social system going and to avoid a breakdown in its functioning
- “She is my spouse, I took a vow to help, what would it mean if people did not follow this vow, the institution of marriage would fall apart”

Question 42

Stage 5: Post Conventional Level, Kohlberg?

Answer 42

Social Contract or Individual Rights Orientation:
- Focus on upholding rules that are in the best interest of the group, or were agreed upon by the group
- Some values and rights, such as life and liberty, are universally right and must be upheld in any society, regardless of majority opinion
Desire to maintain the harmony, focus more on the dynamic on the relationship

Question 43

Stage 6: Post Conventional Level, Kohlberg?

Answer 43

Universal Ethical Principles:
- Commitment to self-chosen ethical principles that reflect universal principles of justice
- When laws violate these principles, the individual should act in accordance with these universal principles rather than the law
- More consistently applying internalised values

Question 44

Critique of Kolberg’s Theory

Answer 44

• Criticized as reflecting a biased, intellectualized Western conception of morality that is not applicable to non-Western cultures
• Gender: Kohlberg’s classification of moral judgement is centred on principles of justice and rights which are valued more by males than by females, rather than on values of caring and responsibility for others, which are more central to females.