Grupo UCM de Estudio del Comportamiento Animal y Humano, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28223 Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid, Spain.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2013 Oct;116(2):186-98. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2013.05.007. Epub 2013 Jun 22.
A total of 33 2.5-year-old toddlers were tested for proactive and selective prosocial responding in an iterated Prosocial Game with unfamiliar adult partners who were communicatively neutral and alternated their roles as actors and recipients every other trial. When children were actors, they were required to choose, at no cost to themselves, between a selfish option that delivered a reward to them only (1/0) and a prosocial option that delivered identical rewards to both themselves and their partners (1/1). When adult partners were actors, they consistently behaved prosocially (1/1) or selfishly (1/0) over 10 alternating trials, depending on test condition. An additional 17 children were used as a recipient-absent control group to test for self-oriented versus other-oriented prosocial preferences. This study shows that by 2.5 years of age, and in the particular context of the task administered, toddlers can display proactive, other-oriented prosocial behavior, but their prosocial responding is indiscriminate in that they fail to respond contingently to their partners' prosocial or selfish behavior in the previous trials. These findings lend further support to the view that human prosociality is in place early in development as a basic tendency to be nice to others. This inclination may be so strong that not even partners who are communicatively neutral or repeatedly selfish toward children can erode it. They also suggest that this precocious proactive prosociality may be independent of reciprocity in terms of both its developmental schedule and psychological scaffolding.
共有 33 名 2.5 岁的幼儿参与了一个迭代的亲社会游戏，与陌生的成年伙伴进行互动，这些伙伴在沟通上保持中立，并每隔一次试验交替扮演行为者和接受者的角色。当孩子们是行为者时，他们需要在不花费自己任何代价的情况下，在一个只对自己有利的自私选项（1/0）和一个对自己和伙伴都有利的亲社会选项（1/1）之间做出选择。当成年伙伴是行为者时，根据测试条件，他们在 10 次交替试验中始终表现出亲社会行为（1/1）或自私行为（1/0）。另外 17 名儿童作为接受者缺失对照组，用于测试自我导向与他人导向的亲社会偏好。这项研究表明，在 2.5 岁时，并且在特定的任务环境下，幼儿可以表现出主动的、他人导向的亲社会行为，但他们的亲社会反应是无差别的，因为他们不能根据之前试验中伙伴的亲社会或自私行为做出相应的反应。这些发现进一步支持了这样一种观点，即人类的亲社会性在发展早期就存在，是一种善待他人的基本倾向。这种倾向可能非常强烈，即使是对孩子在沟通上保持中立或反复表现出自私行为的伙伴，也无法削弱它。这些发现还表明，这种早熟的主动亲社会行为可能与互惠无关，无论是在发展时间表还是心理结构方面。
