Developmental - Lecture Four - Prosocial behaviour Flashcards
- Define prosocial behaviour, moral judgement, empathy and sympathy.
Prosocial behaviour
- Voluntary and intentional action (something you can observe, someone is choosing to do it)
- Produces a positive/beneficial outcome (Grusec et al 2002)
- E.g. seeing a book in the wrong place and moving it so the next person who comes to find the book finds it easier
- E.g. offering to get your housemate their shopping in if they’re too busy to leave the house.
like, a “i really don’t need to do this but i’m gonna do it” example.
Moral judgement
- Morals = a person’s standards of behaviour or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do – any kind of reasoning or thinking we do around a situation where we are deciding if something is moral based on our own judgement and belief in morals etc.
Prosocial behaviour is not always automatically moral!
Prosocial behaviour: younger children
Empathy = emotional reaction to others emotional state.
Sympathy = empathy + sense of concern.
Both require perspective taking…
- 10-14 months – may become upset when seeing someone upset (Knafo et al, 2008)
- 18-25 months – may comfort “upset” adult or try and retrieve dropped object (Vaish et al, 2009).
- Provide research evidence of the development of empathy in young children [this links also to LO2 of Lecture 2].
Both require perspective taking…
- 10-14 months – may become upset when seeing someone upset (Knafo et al, 2008)
- 18-25 months – may comfort “upset” adult or try and retrieve dropped object (Vaish et al, 2009).
Children may inherit prosocial or antisocial behaviouir - genetic - nature - Genetic/biological factors (e.g. Hastings et al, 2005).
Nurture? (e.g. Volbrecht et al, 2007) - the environemnt in which you grow and develop.
Caregiver responses to own/others’ conduct/behaviour.
Opportunities provided for a child to engage prosocially in the first place.
Much broader cultural differences of what’s tolerated as prosocial or not prosocial behaviour. E.g. at work, if you want to do well, it is seemed acceptable to work independently and focus on yourself…
Individualism (UK - more cultural tolerance of not prosocial behaviour than other cultures that are more organised around relationships of individuals) versus collectivism
- Describe and critique Piaget’s theory of moral development.
Development of moral judgement: older children
Discrete theories: (means it has stages)
- Piaget
- Kohlberg
- Eisenberg’s levels of prosocial moral judgement
- Have emerged from similar research approaches.
Piaget – Moral Reasoning
- The Moral Judgement of the Child (1935) – observational studies, engaged observation and moral dilemmas.
- A constructivist theory – children learn morality through encounters with peers
Three stages:
1. 0-7 years: “Stage of morality of constraint”
2. 2. 7-10/11 years: Transitional period
3. 10/11 years + : “Stage of autonomous morality”
Criticisms of Piaget
- Some evidence for these theories (including cross-culturally)
BUT:
- Piaget (as usual) understated how children’s experiences of social interaction might vary, and these variations might be important
- Questions about the construction of the stories themselves – stories are written in a way that emphasises how many cups are broken – since then people have redone this, the child’s not left with the cups as the departing part of the story – might have been biasing children to come out with a particular response
- Describe and critique Kohlberg’s theory of moral development.
Kohlberg Morality Development
- Stage theory – examined longitudinally (from the age of 10)
- Preconventional Morality
Reasoning in relation to self
Conventions/rules/expectations not fully understood
1. Obedience and punishment orientation (How can I avoid punishment?) - I wont break into the shop because I’ll get into trouble
2. Self-interest orientation (What’s in it for me?) use example
- Conventional Morality - around the age of 14
Centred on personal relationships - Interpersonal accord and conformity (Social norms) (The good boy/good girl attitude) - I’m going to break into this shop or other people might think I’m not a nice person
- Authority and social-order maintaining orientation (Law and order morality - focused on fulfilling duties) - bringing in social norms, wife is dying, need the drug to save her, society will think wrong of me if I don’t break in, I want to break in to help my wife
- Post conventional Morality - associated only with cultures that happen to have this type of thinking present in their culture (a minority) - talking in an abstract way, requires an academic understanding of what a culture is in order to work through particular moral principles e..g about human rights, equality, things that hold society together.
- The social contract orientation suggests this is where people will talk through these issues - everyone has a right to life, the right to life triumphs/underpins the right to property
- Universal ethical principles (Principled conscience)
IF PRINCIPLE AND RULE CONFLICT, JUDGE BY PRINCIPLE. Orientation to principles and rights
Criticism of Kohlberg:
- Too subjective a measure e.g. these stages are better than the next, being part of the last stage to Kolhberg means you’re more academic, how do you know how one person fits into one of these stages
- Scale dilemmas were not standardised - weren’t piloted first, just wrote them and tried them out on people, specific to certain cultures
- Dilemmas are intuitive and unrelasiitc (Damon 1977) compare two “bad outcomes”! e.g. Heinz either steals something and gets arrested or his wife dies - arent good of tests of moral reasoning as talking of things that wouldn’t happen out of a normal context
- Used exclusively male participants!
Gilligan (1982) : women’s morality focuses on ‘responsibility’ + focus on impact of behaviour on others (context dependent)
- Describe Eisenberg’s theory of pro-social development.
Picked up the same idea that Kohlberg had used but changed a key thing - made her dilemmas much more focused around everyday circumstances where children may be required to help one another (prosocial behaviour) - more grounded, things that were more familiar to children
An example of an Eisenberg dilemma:
“One day a boy named Eric was going to a friend’s birthday party. On his way he saw a boy who had fallen down and hurt his leg. The boy asked Eric to go to his house and get his parents so the parents could come and take him to a doctor. But if Eric did do this, he would be late to the birthday party and miss the ice cream, cake and fun…
“ - What should Eric do? Found that straightaway after focusing on these everyday behaviours - FOUND THAT: Pre-school children
Generally hedonistic responses - focused on their immediate needs - quite selfish arguments e.g. Eric shouldn’t help the boy or he’ll miss the party
Some needs-based responses
Between 4-11
First respond according to others’ approval/stereotyped “good and bad”
Begin then to empathise - Eric should go get the parents because the child needs help because if not that will be naughty - some moral judgement happening here that wasn’t happening in the earlier stage - get help because that’s what a good person should do. 6/7 year olds may say: The child is hurt, so he needs someone to help him because they are sad and will want their mummy and daddy - more sophisticated response - more complex social cognition - balancing the others feelings
Older children - over the age of 10/11 - Kohlberg’s were a lot older when they could do this - suggests really strongly that Kohlberg’s experiments were really confounded, too complex language, too complex contexts, meaning only older children could do them, an underestimation of how good children are at this stuff -
Begin to use internalised values/norms
