Journal
CHILD DEVELOPMENT
Volume 87, Issue 6, Pages 1703-1714Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12633
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Funding
- DFG (German Research Foundation) Excellence Cluster 302: Languages of Emotions
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Children's instrumental helping has sometimes been interpreted as a desire to complete action sequences or to restore the physical order of things. Two-year-old children (n=51) selectively retrieved for an adult the object he needed rather than one he did not (but which equally served to restore the previous order of things), and those with greater internal arousal (i.e., pupil dilation) were faster to help. In a second experiment (n=64), children's arousal increased when they witnessed an adult respond inappropriately to another adult's need. This was not the case in a nonsocial control condition. These findings suggest that children's helping is not aimed at restoring the order of things but rather at seeing another person's need fulfilled.
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