The Development of Prosocial Attention Across Two Cultures.

Esther Herrmann,Robert Hepach

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00138

Abstract

Despite the significance of prosocial attention for understanding variability in children’s prosociality little is known about its expression beyond infancy and outside the Western cultural context. In the current study we asked whether children’s sensitivity to others’ needs varies across ages and between a Western and Non-Western cultural group. We carried out a cross-cultural and cross-sectional eye tracking study in Kenya (n = 128) and Germany (n = 83) with children between the ages of 3 to 9 years old. Half the children were presented with videos depicting an instrumental helping situation in which one adult reached for an object while a second adult resolved or did not resolve the need. The second half of children watched perceptually controlled non-social control videos in which objects moved without any adults present. German children looked longer at the videos than Kenyan children who in turn looked longer at the non-social compared to the social videos. At the same time, children in both cultures and across all age groups anticipated the relevant solution to the instrumental problem in the social but not in the non-social control condition. We did not find systematic changes in children’s pupil dilation in response to seeing the problem occur or in response to the resolution of the situation. These findings suggest that children’s anticipation of how others’ needs are best resolved is a cross-cultural phenomenon that persists throughout childhood.

Highlights

Prosocial attention, the degree to which we attend to the needs of others, precedes prosocial behavior
German children came from middle-class families and Kenyan children were all Kikuyu, who lived in small villages near the Kenyan town of Nanyuki
Initial Attention The time children spent looking at the video varied at a statistically marginal level by cultural group and condition, F(1,201) = 3.38, p = 0.069, η2p = 0.02

Summary

Introduction

The degree to which we attend to the needs of others, precedes prosocial behavior Even before they are old enough to actively help others themselves, children have been shown to focus on how well others are helped in both sharing and instrumental helping contexts (Kuhlmeier et al, 2003; Geraci and Surian, 2011; Hamlin et al, 2011; Hepach et al, 2016; Köster et al, 2016b). Seeing individuals being helped (or not) provides a child crucial social information They become familiar with various forms of need, e.g., instrumental needs, emotional needs, and material needs (Dunfield, 2014), and they learn the prosocial or antisocial nature of the agents they are observing, i.e., whom to approach because they helped others and whom to avoid because they did not help others (Vaish et al, 2010; Dahl et al, 2013; Van de Vondervoort and Hamlin, 2018). Studying the mechanisms of prosocial attention, i.e., how children anticipate help and how their physiological arousal changes as a consequence of others needing help and being helped, can contribute to a better understanding of the individual differences observed in children’s prosocial behavior

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