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The Social Origins of Human Prosociality

Audun Dahl1, Celia A Brownell2

  • 1University of California, Santa Cruz.

Current Directions in Psychological Science
|October 12, 2019
PubMed

Insights

Children

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Social Neuroscience

Background:

  • Prosocial behavior, including helping, emerges early in life.
  • Understanding the developmental trajectory of prosociality is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To explore key insights into the emergence and early development of prosocial behavior, specifically focusing on helping.
  • To examine the evolving motivations and capabilities for helping in young children.
  • To investigate the role of bidirectional social interactions in fostering prosocial development.

Main Methods:

  • Review of recent research on prosocial behavior development.
  • Analysis of observational and experimental studies on infant and toddler helping behaviors.
  • Theoretical synthesis of social interaction's influence on prosociality.

Main Results:

  • Helping behaviors evolve from participatory actions without prosocial intent to autonomous, intent-driven actions.
  • Prosocial motivations and capabilities change in quality and quantity during early childhood.
  • Helping emerges through dynamic, bidirectional social interactions from birth.

Conclusions:

  • Social interactions are fundamental to the development of prosocial behavior.
  • Future research should focus on the mechanisms of social influence on prosociality.
  • Understanding the social and emotional origins of human prosociality is an active area of research.

Keywords:
DEVELOPMENTHELPINGINFANCYPROSOCIAL BEHAVIORSOCIALIZATION

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