Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany.
Psychol Res. 2020 Jul;84(5):1440-1450. doi: 10.1007/s00426-019-01148-8. Epub 2019 Feb 13.
Infants and toddlers engage in instrumental helping, that is, help others in achieving an action-based goal. The underlying psychological mechanisms are unclear and hotly debated. The present study examined whether young children's helping is affected by others' need. To this end, 1.5- and 3.5-year-old children (n = 101) were simultaneously confronted with a needy and a non-needy other in a variety of helping tasks. The results show that the 3.5-year-old, but not the 1.5-year-old children preferentially helped the needy person. This suggests developmental changes in the psychological mechanisms underlying early instrumental helping. The results are explained by a developmental account according to which helping only gradually becomes an other-oriented and need-based behavior in the first years of life.
婴儿和幼儿会进行工具性帮助，即为了实现基于动作的目标而帮助他人。其潜在的心理机制尚不清楚，并且存在激烈的争论。本研究旨在检验儿童的帮助是否受到他人需求的影响。为此，研究人员在各种帮助任务中同时让 1.5 岁和 3.5 岁的儿童（n=101）面对有需要的人和没有需要的人。结果表明，只有 3.5 岁的儿童而不是 1.5 岁的儿童更倾向于帮助有需要的人。这表明在早期工具性帮助的心理机制方面存在发展变化。研究结果可以通过一种发展解释来说明，即帮助行为只是在生命的最初几年才逐渐成为一种面向他人和基于需要的行为。
