Task 9 Flashcards
Help!
dimensions of altruism
- helping
- helping others achieve their goals
- 14-18 months: already start to help
- helping others comes naturally to humans
dimensions of altruism
- sharing
- sharing valuable goods
- children share food and other resources from a relatively early age
dimensions of altruism
- informing
- informing others of things they need or want to know
- 12 months: infants inform others of things helpfully
- altruistic informing seems to come naturally
humans and monkeys
- similarities and differences
- study for research about nature and nurture
- similarities:
- innate component (both) —> informing about threat, helping
- differences:
- sharing —> kids do, chimpanzees usually don’t
Reasons why children help
- oxytocin
- evolutionary reasons
- oxytocin: helping transmitter (women have more)
- evolutionary reasons —> more likely to carry on genes
Reasons why children help
- sympathy and empathy
- sympathy: feeling of concern for another in reaction to the other’s emotional state or condition
- 10-14 months
- empathy: emotional reaction to another’s emotional state or condition that is highly similar to the other person’s state or condition
Reasons why children help
- inductive parenting
= adults point out to the child the effect of his/her actions on others or on the functioning of the group
—> especially effective in promoting altruistic behavior
Reasons why children help
- development of conscience
- 2 years: appreciation for moral standards and rules, show guilt
Differences in helping behavior
- gender
- women have more oxytocin
- girls more prosocial — also: “expected to be” (social aspects)
Differences in helping behavior
- cultural
- religious beliefs
Differences in helping behavior
- individual
- socio-economic class
- relationship to parents
- reinforcement —> does not help (rewards only effective in short-term)
- once artificial rewards stop: do not help anymore
Piaget
- general assumption
- believed that interactions with peers, more than adult influence, account for advances in children’s moral reasoning
- studied children by:
- observing them playing games
- interviews
Piaget
- stages
- 1: stage of the morality of constraint
- younger than 7 years
- rules & duties: unchangable “givens”
- justice: whatever authorities say is right
- punishments: always justified
- determinants of good and bad: consequences (not motives or intentions)
- belief that rules are unchangeable (parental control and cognitive immaturity)
Piaget
- stages
- transitional period
- age 7 or 8 to age 10
- games with peers —> learn that rules can be constructed and changed by the group
- start to value fairness and equality and begin to become more autonomous in their thinking about moral issues
Piaget
- stages
- stage of autonomous morality
- age 11 or 12
- no longer accept blind obedience to authority as basis of moral decisions
- fully understand that rules are product of social agreement and can be changed if the majority of a group agrees to do so
- punishments should “fit the crime”
