Toddlers’ helping, sharing, and empathic distress
Does the race of the target matter
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9796752 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Deborah Laible (0000-0001-8493-0624, Lehigh University, corresponding author), Erin Karahuta (Lehigh University), William Stout (0000-0002-7225-2659, Lehigh University), Clare Van Norden (0000-0002-4085-4399, Lehigh University), Alysia Cruz (0000-0001-8824-6141, Lehigh University), Princess Neely (0000-0002-9702-8995, Lehigh University), Gustavo Carlo (0000-0002-4967-241X, University of California, Irvine), Afra Elif Agalar (0000-0003-4858-5258), Afra Agalar (Lehigh University) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 9 |
| Pages | 1452-1462 |
| Publication date | 2021-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Developmental Psychology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0012-1649 • E-ISSN: 1939-0599 |
| Publisher | American Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1037/dev0001233 |
| PMID | 34929090 |
| OpenAlex | W3214432004 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
Some work demonstrates toddlers show preferences in targets of their prosocial behavior, and a number of theorists have argued that young children become increasingly likely to direct their prosocial behavior to ingroup over outgroup targets with development. The goal of this study was to examine whether toddlers' early helping, sharing, and empathic distress were influenced by the race of the target person. Ninety-four White European American 18-month-old (17-19 months, M = 18.25, SD = .43; 55.1% male) and 24-month-old (23-25 months; M = 23.67, SD = .57; 53.1% male) toddlers took part in a series of tasks designed to assess children's instrumental helping, sharing, and empathic distress. These toddlers came from well-educated families (86.4% of mothers had a college degree and 73.8% of their partners had a college degree or more). In the study, the race of the needy target was manipulated, so that half of the children had the opportunity to respond prosocially to a White target and half had the opportunity to be prosocial to a Black target. The race of the needy experimenter influenced children's instrumental helping and emotional arousal in a feigned injury task, but did not influence their sharing behavior. Contrary to our hypothesis, though, the older toddlers expressed more empathic distress and arousal to the Black experimenter's feigned injury than to a White experimenter's feigned injury. Implications for theory and research aimed at understanding discriminatory prosocial behaviors between young children are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)
Arousal · Developmental psychology · Distress · Empathic concern · Empathy · Helping behavior · Personal distress · Perspective-taking · Prosocial behavior · PsycINFO · Socioemotional selectivity theory · Child Abuse and Trauma · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development · Clinical Psychology · Psychology · Social Psychology
A longitudinal study of the differential social‐cognitive foundations of early prosocial behaviors
Longitudinal associations between parental psychological control and adolescents' intergroup attitudes to prosocial behaviors towards ethnic outgroups
The development of cooperation and cooperative norm enforcement in children and adolescents
Mapping Research on Early Ethnic‐Racial Awareness Development Among Infants and Toddlers
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,8 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2025 (5) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |