Green Mitchell, Kirby James N, Nielsen Mark
School of Psychology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Early Cognitive Development Centre, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Br J Dev Psychol. 2018 Nov;36(4):673-678. doi: 10.1111/bjdp.12252. Epub 2018 Jun 10.
Children engage in prosocial behaviour from an early age. Whether children will reliably provide compassionate help to a suffering individual is unclear. To investigate this, 73 4-years-olds were presented with three novel tasks in which they and a puppet had opportunity to win stickers by completing respective versions of the same tasks. In all cases, the puppets were unable to complete their tasks. The puppets 'reacted' by being either upset or not upset. While children provided help when it did not cost them, their inclination to do so was significantly diminished when it incurred a personal cost. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Children are generally prosocial and altruistic. Personal cost can inhibit prosocial helping in children. What does this study add? We created two conditions (distress vs. no distress) and (cost vs. no cost) to examine the difference between prosocial and compassionate helping. We obtained first evidence that children will not respond compassionately when incurring a personal cost.
儿童从小就会表现出亲社会行为。但尚不清楚儿童是否会始终如一地向受苦的个体提供同情性帮助。为了对此进行调查，研究人员让73名4岁儿童参与了三项新任务，在这些任务中，他们和一个木偶都有机会通过完成各自版本的相同任务来赢得贴纸。在所有情况下，木偶都无法完成任务。木偶通过表现出难过或不难过的“反应”。虽然孩子们在不付出代价时会提供帮助，但当这会让他们付出个人代价时，他们这样做的意愿就会显著降低。贡献声明关于这个主题已经知道了什么？儿童通常具有亲社会和利他的特质。个人代价会抑制儿童的亲社会帮助行为。这项研究增加了什么？我们创造了两种条件（痛苦与无痛苦）和（代价与无代价）来检验亲社会帮助和同情性帮助之间的差异。我们首次获得证据表明，当付出个人代价时，儿童不会做出同情性反应。
