Department of Psychology, 8784University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA.
Evol Psychol. 2022 Jul-Sep;20(3):14747049221110603. doi: 10.1177/14747049221110603.
What features of people's childhood environments go on to shape their prosocial behavior during adulthood? Past studies linking childhood environment to adult prosocial behavior have focused primarily on adverse features, thereby neglecting the possible influence of exposure to enriched environments (e.g., access to material resources, experiences with rich cooperative relationships, and interactions with morally exemplary role models). Here, we expand the investigation of childhood environmental quality to include consideration of enriching childhood experiences and their relation to adult prosociality. In two cross-sectional studies, we found promising evidence that enriched childhood environments are associated with adult moral behavior. In study 1 ( = 1,084 MTurk workers), we adapted an existing measure of enriched childhood environmental quality for retrospective recall of childhood experiences and found that subjects' recollections of their enriched childhood experiences are distinct from their recollections of adverse childhood experiences. In Study 2 ( = 2,208 MTurk workers), we found that a formative composite of subjects' recollections of enriched childhood experiences is positively associated with a variety of morally relevant traits in adulthood, including agreeableness, honesty-humility, altruism, endorsement of the principle of care, empathic responding to the plights of needy others, and charitable donations in an experimental setting, and that these associations held after controlling for childhood environmental adversity, childhood socioeconomic status, sex, and age. We also found evidence suggesting that some, but not all, of the relationship between enrichment and adult prosociality can be explained by a shared genetic correlation. We include a new seven-item measure as an appendix.
人们的童年环境有哪些特征会影响他们成年后的亲社会行为？过去将童年环境与成年亲社会行为联系起来的研究主要集中在不利特征上，从而忽视了丰富环境（例如，获得物质资源、丰富合作关系的体验以及与道德榜样的互动）可能产生的影响。在这里，我们将对童年环境质量的调查扩展到包括对丰富的童年经历及其与成年亲社会性的关系的考虑。在两项横断面研究中，我们发现了有希望的证据，表明丰富的童年环境与成年道德行为有关。在研究 1（=1084 名 MTurk 工人）中，我们改编了现有的丰富童年环境质量测量方法，用于回忆童年经历，并发现受试者对丰富童年经历的回忆与对不良童年经历的回忆不同。在研究 2（=2208 名 MTurk 工人）中，我们发现，受试者对丰富童年经历的回忆的形成性综合与成年后各种与道德相关的特征呈正相关，包括亲和性、诚实-谦逊、利他主义、关怀原则的认可、对有需要的他人困境的同理心反应，以及在实验环境中进行慈善捐赠，并且这些关联在控制了童年环境逆境、童年社会经济地位、性别和年龄后仍然存在。我们还发现了一些证据表明，丰富与成年亲社会行为之间的关系可以用共同的遗传相关性来解释，但不是全部。我们在附录中包含了一个新的七项措施。
