Young Children Are Intrinsically Motivated to See Others Helped

Young children help other people, but it is not clear why. In the current study, we found that 2-year-old children's sympathetic arousal, as measured by relative changes in pupil dilation, is similar when they themselves help a person and when they see that person being helped by a third party...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological science 2012-09, Vol.23 (9), p.967-972
Main Authors: Hepach, Robert, Vaish, Amrisha, Tomasello, Michael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adults
Arousal
Behavior
Behavioural psychology
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child Behavior
Child development
Child, Preschool
Children
Children & youth
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Developmental psychology
Early childhood
Eyes
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Helping Behavior
Humans
Infants
Male
Motivation
Motivation - physiology
Motivation research
Physiological psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychosociology
Pupil
Reciprocal altruism
Research Report
Social attribution, perception and cognition
Social Behavior
Social cognition
Social psychology
Students
Sympathetic Nervous System - physiology
Sympathy
Welfare
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Summary:Young children help other people, but it is not clear why. In the current study, we found that 2-year-old children's sympathetic arousal, as measured by relative changes in pupil dilation, is similar when they themselves help a person and when they see that person being helped by a third party (and sympathetic arousal in both cases is different from that when the person is not being helped at all). These results demonstrate that the intrinsic motivation for young children's helping behavior does not require that they perform the behavior themselves and thus "get credit" for it, but rather requires only that the other person be helped. Thus, from an early age, humans seem to have genuine concern for the welfare of others.
ISSN:0956-7976
1467-9280
DOI:10.1177/0956797612440571