Children's altruistic behavior in context: The role of emotional responsiveness and culture.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Rajhans P
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4853733 | biostudies-other | 2016 May
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other
Similar Datasets
Project description:Children use emotional facial expressions of others for guiding their behavior, a process which is important to a child's social-emotional development. Earlier studies on facial interaction demonstrate that imitation of emotional expressions of others is automatic, yet can be dynamically modulated depending on contextual information. Considering the value of emotional expressions for children especially, we tested whether and to what extent information about children's temperament and domestic situation alters mimicry of their emotional expressions. Results show that angry expressions of children displaying negative behavior resulted in stronger imitation, which may serve as a corrective signal. Sad facial expressions resulted in stronger imitation towards those behaving positively but only when exposed to a difficult domestic situation, indicating increased empathy towards these children. These findings shed new light on the dynamic implicit communicative processes that shape interaction with children of different social-emotional backgrounds.
| S-EPMC5145233 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Compassion, the emotional response of caring for another who is suffering and that results in motivation to relieve suffering, is thought to be an emotional antecedent to altruistic behavior. However, it remains unclear whether compassion enhances altruistic behavior in a uniform way or is specific to sub-types of behavior such as altruistic helping of a victim or altruistic punishment of a transgressor. We investigated the relationship between compassion and subtypes of altruistic behavior using third-party paradigms where participants (1) witnessed an unfair economic exchange between a transgressor and a victim, and (2) had the opportunity to either spend personal funds to either economically (a) help the victim or (b) punish the transgressor. In Study 1, we examined whether individual differences in self-reported empathic concern (the emotional component of compassion) was associated with greater altruistic helping or punishment behavior in two independent samples. For participants who witnessed an unfair transaction, trait empathic concern was associated with greater helping of a victim and had no relationship to punishment. However, in those who decided to punish the transgressor, participants who reported greater empathic concern decided to punish less. In Study 2, we directly enhanced compassion using short-term online compassion meditation training to examine whether altruistic helping and punishment were increased after two weeks of training. Compared to an active reappraisal training control group, the compassion training group gave more to help the victim and did not differ in punishment of the transgressor. Together, these two studies suggest that compassion is related to greater altruistic helping of victims and is not associated with or may mitigate altruistic punishment of transgressors.
| S-EPMC4675554 | biostudies-literature
Project description:People's tendency to be more generous toward identifiable victims than toward unidentifiable or statistical victims is known as the Identifiable Victim Effect. Recent research has called the generality of this effect into question, showing that in cross-national contexts, identifiability mostly affects willingness to help victims of one's own "in-group." Furthermore, in inter-group conflict situations, identifiability increased generosity toward a member of the adversary group, but decreased generosity toward a member of one's own group. In the present research we examine the role of group-cohesiveness as an underlying factor accounting for these divergent findings. In particular, we examined novel groups generated in the lab, using the minimal group paradigm, as well as natural groups of students in regular exercise sections. Allocation decisions in dictator games revealed that a group's cohesiveness affects generosity toward in-group and out-group recipients differently, depending on their identifiability. In particular, in cohesive groups the identification of an in-group recipient decreased, rather than increased generosity.
| S-EPMC5697805 | biostudies-literature
Project description:OBJECTIVE:To address calls for a resilience-informed approach to understand the cause and prevention of childhood obesity, the current study aims to investigate the independent and interactive associations between household chaos, maternal emotional responsiveness, and eating behavior in early childhood. METHOD:A sample of (n = 108) families of 18- to 24-month-olds completed self-report surveys and consented to home visits as part of the larger STRONG Kids 2 (N = 468) study. Videotapes of family mealtimes were collected during home visits and coded for observed maternal emotional responsiveness. Mothers completed questionnaires assessing maternal emotional responsiveness, household chaos, and child eating behaviors. Moderation analyses assessed independent and interactive effects of chaos and emotional responsiveness on child appetite self-regulation. RESULTS:In moderation analyses controlling for demographic covariates, higher levels of chaos were associated with more emotional overeating and with more food responsiveness, but only among children of mothers observed engaging in low levels of responsiveness at mealtimes. There was no association between chaos and eating behavior among children of mothers observed engaging in high levels of emotional responsiveness at mealtimes. There was also no independent or interactive association between chaos and child eating behaviors characterized by food avoidance. CONCLUSION:Preliminary evidence suggests that maternal emotional responsiveness at mealtimes may attenuate the deleterious effects of chaos on child overeating and food responsiveness. Future research should prioritize using longitudinal designs, developing observational assessments of early childhood eating behaviors, and understanding these processes among families exposed to greater socioeconomic adversity.
| S-EPMC7046125 | biostudies-literature
Project description:What are the determinants of altruism? While economists assume that altruism is mainly driven by fairness norms, social psychologists consider empathy to be a key motivator for altruistic behavior. To unite these two theories, we conducted an experiment in which we compared behavior in a standard economic game that assesses altruism (the so-called Dictator Game) with a Dictator Game in which participants' behavioral choices were preceded either by an empathy induction or by a control condition without empathy induction. The results of this within-subject manipulation show that the empathy induction substantially increased altruistic behavior. Moreover, the increase in experienced empathy predicted over 40% of the increase in sharing behavior. These data extend standard economic theories that altruism is based on fairness considerations, by showing that empathic feelings can be a key motivator for altruistic behavior in economic interactions.
| S-EPMC5005993 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Using an incentivized experiment with statistical power, this paper explores the role of stakes in charitable giving of lottery prizes, where subjects commit to donate a fraction of the prize before they learn the outcome of the lottery. We study three stake levels: 5€ (n = 177), 100€ (n = 168), and 1,000€ (n = 171). Although the donations increase in absolute terms as the stakes increase, subjects decrease the donated fraction of the pie. However, people still share roughly 20% of 1,000€, an amount as high as the average monthly salary of people at the age of our subjects. The number of people sharing 50% of the pie is remarkably stable across stakes, but donating the the whole pie-the modal behavior in charity-donation experiments-disappears with stakes. Such hyper-altruistic behavior thus seems to be an artifact of the stakes typically employed in economic and psychological experiments. Our findings point out that sharing with others is a prevalent human feature, but stakes are an important determinant of sharing. Policies promoted via prosocial frames (e.g., stressing the effects of mask-wearing or social distancing on others during the Covid-19 pandemic or environmentally-friendly behaviors on future generations) may thus be miscalibrated if they disregard the stakes at play.
| S-EPMC8386826 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Human altruistic behaviors are heterogeneous across both contexts and people, whereas the neural signatures underlying the heterogeneity remain to be elucidated. To address this issue, we examined the neural signatures underlying the context- and person-dependent altruistic punishment, conjoining event-related fMRI with both task-based and resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC). Acting as an impartial third party, participants decided how to punish norm violators either alone or in the presence of putative others. We found that the presence of others decreased altruistic punishment due to diffusion of responsibility. Those behavioral effects paralleled altered neural responses in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and putamen. Further, we identified modulation of responsibility diffusion on task-based functional connectivity of dACC with the brain regions implicated in reward processing (i.e., posterior cingulate cortex and amygdala/orbital frontal cortex). Finally, the RSFC results revealed that (i) increased intrinsic connectivity strengths of the putamen with temporoparietal junction and dorsolateral PFC were associated with attenuated responsibility diffusion in altruistic punishment and (ii) increased putamen-dorsomedial PFC connectivity strengths were associated with reduced responsibility diffusion in self-reported responsibility. Taken together, our findings elucidate the context- and person-dependent altruistic behaviors as well as associated neural substrates and thus provide a potential neurocognitive mechanism of heterogeneous human altruistic behaviors. Hum Brain Mapp 38:5535-5550, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
| S-EPMC6867140 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Emotional eating (EE; defined as overeating irrespective of satiety and in response to emotional states) develops within childhood, persists into adulthood, and is linked with obesity. The origins of EE remain unclear, but parental behaviours (e.g., controlling feeding practices and modelling) and child characteristics (e.g., temperament) are often implicated. To date, the interaction between these influences has not been well investigated. This study explores whether the relationship between parent and child EE is shaped by parental feeding practices, and if the magnitude of this relationship varies as a function of child temperament. Mothers (N = 244) of 3-5-year-olds completed questionnaires about their EE, feeding practices, their children's EE and temperament. Results showed that parental use of food to regulate children's emotions fully mediated the relationship between parent and child EE, and using food as a reward and restricting food for health reasons partially mediated this relationship. Analyses demonstrated that the mediated relationship between parent and child EE via use of food as a reward and restriction of food for health reasons varied as a function of child negative affect, where high child negative affect moderated these mediations. These findings suggest child EE may result from interrelationships between greater parent EE, use of food as a reward, restriction of food for health reasons and negative affective temperaments, but that greater use of food for emotion regulation may predict greater child EE irrespective of child temperament.
| S-EPMC9218318 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectiveChild pedestrian injuries represent a global public health burden. To date, most research on psychosocial factors affecting children's risk of pedestrian injury focused on cognitive aspects of children's functioning in traffic. Recent evidence suggests, however, that emotional aspects such as temperament-based fear and anger/frustration, as well as executive function-based emotional decision making, may also affect children's safety in traffic. This study examined the role of emotions on children's pedestrian behavior. Three hypotheses were considered: (a) emotion-based temperament factors of fear and anger/frustration will predict children's risky decisions and behaviors; (b) emotional decision making will predict risky pedestrian decisions and behaviors; and (c) children's pedestrian decision making will mediate relations between emotion and risky pedestrian behavior. The role of gender was also considered.MethodsIn total, 140 6- to 7-year-old children (M = 6.7 years, SD = 0.39; 51% girls) participated. Parent-report subscales of Child Behavior Questionnaire measured temperamental fear and anger/frustration. The Hungry Donkey Task, a modified version of Iowa Gambling Task for children, measured children's emotional decision making, and a mobile virtual reality pedestrian environment measured child pedestrian behavior.ResultsGreater anger/frustration, lesser fear, and more emotional decision making all predicted poorer pedestrian decision making. The mediational model demonstrated that pedestrian decision making, as assessed by delays entering safe traffic gaps, mediated the relation between emotion and risky pedestrian behavior. Analyses stratified by gender showed stronger mediation results for girls than for boys.ConclusionsThese results support the influence of emotions on child pedestrian behavior and reinforce the need to incorporate emotion regulation training into child pedestrian education programs.
| S-EPMC7850000 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Altruistic behavior is considered a key feature of the human cooperative makeup, with deep ontogenetic roots. The tendency to engage in altruistic behavior varies between individuals and has been linked to differences in responding to fearful faces. The current study tests the hypothesis that this link exists from early in human ontogeny. Using eye tracking, we examined whether attentional responses to fear in others at 7 months of age predict altruistic behavior at 14 months of age. Our analysis revealed that altruistic behavior in toddlerhood was predicted by infants' attention to fearful faces but not happy or angry faces. Specifically, infants who showed heightened initial attention to (i.e., prolonged first look) followed by greater disengagement (i.e., reduced attentional bias over 15 seconds) from fearful faces at 7 months displayed greater prosocial behavior at 14 months of age. Our data further show that infants' attentional bias to fearful faces and their altruistic behavior was predicted by brain responses in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), measured through functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). This suggests that, from early in ontogeny, variability in altruistic helping behavior is linked to our responsiveness to seeing others in distress and brain processes implicated in attentional control. These findings critically advance our understanding of the emergence of altruism in humans by identifying responsiveness to fear in others as an early precursor contributing to variability in prosocial behavior.
| S-EPMC6155440 | biostudies-literature