Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-GENERAL
Volume 151, Issue 8, Pages 1866-1882Publisher
AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC
DOI: 10.1037/xge0001136
Keywords
psychology; morality; development; prosocial; cross-cultural
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The study found that younger children tend to believe that everyone is obligated to help those in need, while older children and adults exhibit more discriminatory judgments. Adults generally consider parents to have a greater obligation to help others, with varying judgments towards friends and strangers, which varies across cultures.
Do children, like most adults, believe that only kin and close others are obligated to help one another? In two studies (total N = 1140), we examined whether children (similar to 5- to similar to 10-yos) and adults across five different societies consider social relationship when ascribing prosocial obligations. Contrary to the view that such discriminations are a natural default in human reasoning, younger children in the United States (Studies 1 and 2) and across cultures (Study 2) generally judged everyone-parents, friends, and strangers-as obligated to help someone in need. Older children and adults, on the other hand, tended to exhibit more discriminant judgments. They considered parents more obligated to help than friends followed by strangers-although this effect was stronger in some cultures than others. Our findings suggest that children's initial sense of prosocial obligation in social-relational contexts starts out broad and generally becomes more selective over the course of development.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available