Prosocial behaviour

Question 1

prosocial behaviour def

Answer 1

voluntary behaviour intended to benefit another eg. comforting, helping, sharing, providing helpful info

Question 2

altruism

Answer 2

prosocial behaviour that is performed for unselfish motives (ie. no benefit to self, even in long run)

Question 3

with age more or less pro social behaviour?

Answer 3

more (Eisenberg and Fabes), however, altruism in infancy isn’t uncommon (warneken and Tomasello)

Question 4

Comforting

Answer 4

rate with which children comfort others who are in pain or distress (rather than reacting with stress themselve) increases over the second year of life (Zahn-Waxler et al)
–before 2 yrs old = unable to regulate emotion and become distressed themselves

Question 5

Helping

Answer 5

18 months olds helps others in simple tasks(Warneken and Tomasello, 2006)
Chimpanzees also help in similar situations where it is easy for them to infer what the persons goal is
–> taken as evidence that altruism is something we are biologically prepared for and is not just the result of cultural transmission or explicit teaching

Question 6

Sharing

Answer 6

communication = sharing info
from about 12 months if infants see someone searching for something they point to object to tell them where it is (Liszkowski et al)
Moore(2009) - 4 and a half - 6yr olds drew a pic of:a)classmate they liked b)classmate they didn’t c) unknown photo of another child
-played resource allocation game to share stickers
‘prosocial trial’ child told - ‘ you can have one sticker for yourself now or either a/b/c and yourself for later
‘sharing tr