Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T00:02:01.702Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Introduction: What Is Prosocial Development?

Definition, History, Mechanisms

from Part I - Development of Prosociality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2023

By
Tina Malti  and
Maayan Davidov
Edited by
Tina Malti  and
Maayan Davidov
Tina Malti
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Maayan Davidov
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Get access

Summary

This chapter provides an introduction to the topic of this handbook: prosociality and its development across the first two decades of life, as well as causes, correlates, and consequences across the lifespan. We begin by providing conceptualizations of prosociality and derive an understanding of what prosociality is, and how it is different from related constructs. We then describe core theoretical accounts on prosocial development. Selected historical attempts to understand prosociality in humans are reviewed, along with historical turning points in early theorizing on prosocial development. Last, a brief summary of select mechanisms underlying the development of prosociality is presented.

Keywords

prosocialitychild developmenthistory of child developmentmechanisms of prosocial development
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Prosociality
Development, Mechanisms, Promotion
 , pp. 3 - 16
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ainsworth, M. D. (1985). Patterns of attachment. The Clinical Psychologist, 38(2), 27–29.Google Scholar
Ainsworth, M. D., & Bell, S. M. (1970). Attachment, exploration, and separation: Illustrated by the behavior of one-year-olds in a strange situation. Child Development, 41(1), 49–67. https://doi.org/10.2307/1127388Google Scholar
Aknin, L. B., Dunn, E. W., Helliwell, J. F., Biswas-Diener, R., Nyende, P., Barrington-Leigh, C. P., Burns, J., Kemeza, I., Ashton-James, C. E., & Norton, M. I. (2013). Prosocial spending and well-being: Cross-cultural evidence for a psychological universal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(4), 635–652. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031578Google Scholar
Aristotle. (1959). Aristotelis: Ars rhetorica (Ross, W. D., Ed.). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780198145578.book.1Google Scholar
Bandura, A. (1973). Aggression: A social learning analysis. Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Bandura, A., & Walters, R.H. (1963). Social learning and personality development. Holt Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Batson, C. D. (2012). A history of prosocial behavior research. In Kruglanski, A. W. & Stroebe, W. (Eds.), Handbook of the history of social psychology (pp. 243–264). Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Beauchaine, T. P., Gatzke-Kopp, L., Neuhaus, E., Chipman, J., Reid, M. J., & Webster-Stratton, C. (2013). Sympathetic- and parasympathetic-linked cardiac function and prediction of externalizing behavior, emotion regulation, and prosocial behavior among preschoolers treated for ADHD. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 81(3), 481–493. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032302Google Scholar
Blandon, A. Y., & Scrimgeour, M. B. (2015). Child, parenting, and situational characteristics associated with toddlers’ prosocial behavior. Infant and Child Development, 24(6), 643–660. https:/doi.org/10.1002/icd.1910CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, P. (2017). Empathy and its discontents. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21(1), 24–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.11.004Google Scholar
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss, Vol. 1: Attachment. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Brownell, C. A., & The Early Social Development Research Lab. (2016). Prosocial behavior in infancy: The role of socialization. Child Development Perspectives, 10(4), 222–227. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12189Google Scholar
Buber, M. (1923). Ich und Du (I and Thou). Verlag Lambert Schneider.Google Scholar
Carlo, G., Hausmann, A., Christiansen, S., & Randall, B. A. (2003). Sociocognitive and behavioral correlates of a measure of prosocial tendencies for adolescents. Journal of Early Adolescence, 23, 107–134. https:/doi.org/10.1177/0272431602239132Google Scholar
Carlo, G., Knight, G. P., McGinley, M., Goodvin, R., & Roesch, S. C. (2010). The developmental relations between perspective taking and prosocial behaviors: A meta-analytic examination of the task-specificity hypothesis. In Sokol, B. W., Müller, U., Carpendale, J. I. M., Young, A. R., & Iarocci, G. (Eds.), Self and social regulation: Social interaction and the development of social understanding and executive functions (pp. 234–269). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195327694.003.0010Google Scholar
Colby, A., & Damon, W. (1992 ). Some do care: Contemporary lives of moral commitment. Free Press.Google Scholar
Confucius. (1885). The Lijii (The book of rites) (J. Legge, Trans.). Clarendon Press (originally published n.d.).Google Scholar
Davidov, M., Paz, Y., Roth-Hanania, R., Uzefovsky, F., Orlitsky, T., Mankuta, D., & Zahn-Waxler, C. (2021). Caring babies: Concern for others in distress during infancy. Developmental Science, 24(2), e13016. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13016CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Davidov, M., Vaish, A., Knafo‐Noam, A., & Hastings, P. D. (2016). The motivational foundations of prosocial behavior from a developmental perspective – Evolutionary roots and key psychological mechanisms: Introduction to the special section. Child Development, 87(6), 1655–1667. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12639Google Scholar
Davidov, M., Zahn-Waxler, C., Roth-Hanania, R., & Knafo, A. (2013). Concern for others in the first year of live: Theory, evidence, and avenues for research. Child Development Perspectives, 7(2), 126–131. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12028Google Scholar
Decety, J., & Cowell, J. M. (2014). The complex relation between morality and empathy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18(7), 337–339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2014.04.008CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dodge, K. A., Pettit, G. S., McClaskey, C. L., & Brown, M. M. (1986). Social competence in children. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 51(2), 1–85. https://doi.org/10.2307/1165906Google Scholar
Domitrovich, C. E., Durlak, J. A., Staley, K. C., & Weissberg, R. P. (2017). Social-emotional competence: An essential factor for promoting positive adjustment and reducing risk in school children. Child Development, 88(2), 408–416. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12739Google Scholar
Dunfield, K. A. (2014). A construct divided: Prosocial behavior as helping, sharing, and comforting subtypes. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 958. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00958Google Scholar
Dunfield, K., Kuhlmeier, V. A., O’Connell, L., & Kelley, E. (2011). Examining the diversity of prosocial behavior: Helping, sharing, and comforting in infancy. Infancy, 16(3), 227–247. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7078.2010.00041.xGoogle Scholar
Dys, S.P., Zuffianò, A., Orsanska, V., Zaazou, N., & Malti, T. (2022). Children’s attentional orientation is associated with their kind emotions. Developmental Psychology, 58(9), 1676–1686.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N. (1986). Altruistic emotion, cognition, and behavior. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N. (2000). Emotion, regulation, and moral development. Annual Review of Psychology, 51, 665–697. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.51.1.665Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N., & Miller, P. A. (1987). The relation of empathy to prosocial and related behaviors. Psychological Bulletin, 101(1), 91–119. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.101.1.91Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N., Pidada, S., & Liew, J. (2001). The relations of regulation and negative emotionality to Indonesian children’s social functioning. Child Development, 72(6), 1747–1763. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00376Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N., Spinrad, T. L., & Knafo-Noam, A. (2015). Prosocial development. In Lamb, M. E. & Coll, C. G. (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology and developmental science, Vol. 3: Socioemotional processes (pp. 610–656). Wiley.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, N., VanSchyndel, S. K., & Spinrad, T. L. (2016). Prosocial motivation: Inferences from an opaque body of work. Child Development, 87(6), 1668–1678. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12638Google Scholar
Eisner, M. P., & Malti, T. (2015). Aggressive and violent behavior. In Lamb, M. E. (Vol. Ed.) and Lerner, R. M (Series Ed.), Handbook of child psychology and developmental science, Vol. 3: Social, emotional and personality development (7th ed., pp. 795–884). Wiley.Google Scholar
Fonagy, P., & Luyten, P. (2018). Attachment, mentalizing, and the self. In Livesley, W. J. & Larstone, R. (Eds.), Handbook of personality disorders: Theory, research, and treatment (pp. 123–140). Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Gummerum, M., Hanoch, Y., Keller, M., Parsons, K., & Hummel, A. (2010). Preschoolers’ allocations in the dictator game: The role of moral emotions. Journal of Economic Psychology, 31, 25–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2009.09.002Google Scholar
Hepach, R., Vaish, A., Grossmann, T., & Tomasello, M. (2016). Young children want to see others get the help they need. Child Development, 87(6), 1703–1714. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12633Google Scholar
Hoffman, M. L. (2000). Empathy and moral development: Implications for caring and justice. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511805851Google Scholar
Hui, B. P. H., Ng, J. C. K., Berzaghi, E., Cunningham-Amos, L. A., & Kogan, A. (2020). Rewards of kindness? A meta-analysis of the link between prosociality and well-being. Psychological Bulletin, 146(12), 1084–1116. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000298Google Scholar
Killen, M., & Smetana, J. G. (2015). Origins and development of morality. In Lamb, M. E. & Lerner, R. M. (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology and developmental science: Socioemotional processes (pp. 701–749). John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118963418.childpsy317Google Scholar
Klein, M. (1933). The early development of conscience in the child. Change in nature of superego from vengeful to concerned with guilt and moral sense. Psychoanalysis Today, 149–162.Google Scholar
Knafo-Noam, A., Uzefovsky, F., Israel, S., Davidov, M., & Zahn-Waxler, C. (2015). The prosocial personality and its facets: Genetic and environmental architecture of mother-reported behavior of 7-year-old twins. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 112. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00112Google Scholar
Kochanska, G., Koenig, J. L., Barry, R. A., Kim, S., & Yoon, J. E. (2010). Children’s conscience during toddler and preschool years, moral self, and a competent, adaptive developmental trajectory. Developmental Psychology, 46(5), 1320–1332. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0020381Google Scholar
Köster, M., Ohmer, X., Nguyen, T., & Kärtner, J. (2016). Infants understand others’ needs. Psychological Science, 27(4), 542–548. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615627426Google Scholar
Laible, D., Carlo, G., Panfile, T., Eye, J., & Parker, J. (2010). Negative emotionality and emotion regulation: A person-centered approach to predicting socioemotional adjustment in young adolescents. Journal of Research in Personality, 44(5), 621–629. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2010.08.003Google Scholar
Malti, T. (2021). Kindness: A perspective from developmental psychology. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 18(5), 629–657. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405629.2020.1837617Google Scholar
Malti, T., Chaparro, M. P., Zuffianò, A., & Colasante, T. (2016b). School-based interventions to promote empathy-related responding in children and adolescents: A developmental analysis. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 45(6), 718–731. https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2015.1121822CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Malti, T., & Dys, S. P. (2018). From being nice to being kind: Development of prosocial behaviors. Current Opinion in Psychology. 20, 45–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.07.036Google Scholar
Malti, T., & Krettenauer, T. (2013). The relation of moral emotion attributions to prosocial and antisocial behavior: A meta-analysis. Child Development, 84(2), 397–412. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01851.xGoogle Scholar
Malti, T., Ongley, S. F., Peplak, J., Chaparro, M. P., Buchmann, M., Zuffianò, A., & Cui, L. (2016a). Children’s sympathy, guilt, and moral reasoning in helping, cooperation, and sharing: A 6-year longitudinal study. Child Development, 87(6), 1783–1795. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12632Google Scholar
Malti, T., Peplak, J., & Zhang, L. (2020). The development of respect in children and adolescents. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 85(3), 1–93. https://doi.org/10.1111/mono.12417Google Scholar
Malti, T., Sette, S., & Dys, S. P. (2016c). Social-emotional responding: A perspective from developmental psychology. In Scott, R., Buchmann, M., & Kosslyn, S. (Eds.), Emerging trends in the social and behavioral sciences (pp. 1–15). John Wiley and Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118900772.etrds0415Google Scholar
McKay, R., & Whitehouse, H. (2015). Religion and morality. Psychological Bulletin, 141(2), 447–473. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0038455Google Scholar
Memmott-Elison, M. K., Holmgren, H. G., Padilla-Walker, L. M., & Hawkins, A. J. (2020). Associations between prosocial behavior, externalizing behaviors, and internalizing symptoms during adolescence: A meta-analysis. Journal of Adolescence, 80(March 2019), 98–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2020.01.012Google Scholar
Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P.R. (2015). An attachment perspective on prosocial attitudes and behavior. In Schroeder, D. A. & Graziano, W. G. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook for prosocial behavior. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, J. G., & Bersoff, D. M. (1998). The role of liking in perceptions of the moral responsibility to help: A cultural perspective. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 34(5), 443–469. https://doi.org/10.1006/jesp.1998.1359Google Scholar
Miller, J. G., Nuselovici, J. N., & Hastings, P. D. (2016). Nonrandom acts of kindness: Parasympathetic and subjective empathic responses to sadness predict children’s prosociality. Child Development, 87(6), 1679–1690. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12629Google Scholar
Moustakas, C. E. (1966). Existential child therapy: The child’s discovery of himself. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Nadler, A. (2015). The other side of helping: Seeking and receiving help. In Schroeder, D. A. & Graziano, W. G. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of prosocial behavior (pp. 307–328). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195399813.013.004Google Scholar
Newton, E. K., Thompson, R. A., & Goodman, M. (2016). Individual differences in toddlers’ prosociality: Experiences in early relationships explain variability in prosocial behavior. Child Development, 87(6), 1715–1726. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12631Google Scholar
Obsuth, I., Eisner, M. P., Malti, T., & Ribeaud, D. (2015). The developmental relation between aggressive behaviour and prosocial behaviour: A 5-year longitudinal study. BMC Psychology, 3(1), 16. https://10.1186/s40359-015-0073-4CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ongley, S. F., & Malti, T. (2014). The role of moral emotions in the development of children’s sharing behavior. Developmental Psychology, 50(4), 1148–1159. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035191Google Scholar
Padilla-Walker, L. M., & Carlo, G. (2014). Prosocial development: A multidimensional approach. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199964772.001.0001Google Scholar
Paulus, M., Kühn-Popp, N., Licata, M., Sodian, B., & Meinhardt, J. (2013). Neural correlates of prosocial behavior in infancy: Different neurophysiological mechanisms support the emergence of helping and comforting. NeuroImage, 66, 522–530. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.10.041Google Scholar
Peplak, J., Song, J. H., Colasante, T., & Malti, T. (2017). “Only you can play with me!” Children’s inclusive decision making, reasoning, and emotions based on peers’ gender and behavior problems. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 162, 134–148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.04.019Google Scholar
Rogers, C. (1959). A theory of therapy, personality, and interpersonal relationships: As developed in the client-centered framework. In Koch, S. (Ed.), Psychology: A study of a science, Vol. 3: Formulations of the person and the social context (pp. 184–256). McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
Rosenhan, D. L. (1972). Learning theory and prosocial behavior. Journal of Social Issues, 28(3), 151–163. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1972.tb00037.xGoogle Scholar
Schopenhauer, A. (1840/2007). Über die Grundlage der Moral (On the basis of morality). In Lütkehaus, L. (Ed.), Arthur Schopenhauers Werke in fünf Bänden, Band III. Haffmans Verlag.Google Scholar
Schroeder, D. A., & Graziano, W. G. (2015). The Oxford handbook of prosocial behavior. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schumann, K. (2020). A force for good: When and why religion predicts prosocial behavior. Journal of Moral Theology, 9(1), 34–50.Google Scholar
Schweitzer, A. (1966). Die Ehrfurcht for dem Leben (The reverence for life). Verlag C. H. Beck.Google Scholar
Scrimgeour, M. B., Davis, E. L., & Buss, K. A. (2016). You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit! Emotion socialization and child physiology jointly predict early prosocial development. Developmental Psychology, 52(1), 102–116. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000071Google Scholar
Sierksma, J., Spaltman, M., & Lansu, T. A. M. (2019). Children tell more prosocial lies in favor of in-group than out-group peers. Developmental Psychology, 55(7), 1428–1439. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000721Google Scholar
Staub, E. (2005). The roots of goodness: The fulfillment of basic human needs and the development of caring, helping and non-aggression, inclusive caring, moral courage, active bystandership, and altruism born of suffering. In Carlo, G. & Edwards, C. P. (Eds.), Moral motivation through the life span (pp. 33–72). University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Trommsdorff, G., & Friedlmeier, W. (1999). Motivational conflict and prosocial behaviour of kindergarten children. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 23, 413–429. https://doi.org/10.1080/016502599383892Google Scholar
Van de Vondervoort, J. W., & Hamlin, J. K. (2016). Evidence for intuitive morality: Preverbal infants make sociomoral evaluations. Child Development Perspectives, 10(3), 143–148. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12175Google Scholar
Van Tongeren, D. R., Green, J. D., Davis, D. E., Hook, J. N., & Hulsey, T. L. (2016). Prosociality enhances meaning in life. Journal of Positive Psychology, 11(3), 225–236. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1048814Google Scholar
Yu, J., Zhu, L., & Leslie, A. M. (2016). Children’s sharing behavior in mini-dictator games: The role of in-group favoritism and theory of mind. Child Development, 87(6), 1747–1757. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12635Google Scholar
Ziv, T., & Sommerville, J. A. (2016). Developmental differences in infants’ fairness expectations from 6 to 15 months of age. Child Development, 88(6), 1930–1951. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12674Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×