Question

1. When are child most likely to act altruistically? (5 marks)

Answer 1

Altruism is acting out of concern for another’s well-being. Often, people behave altruistically when they see others in desperate circumstances and feel empathy and a desire to help. It refers to any behavior that is designed to increase another person’s welfare, and particularly those actions that do not seem to provide a direct reward to the person who performs them.

1) "Reciprocal altruism" is a term used by evolutionary biologists and psychologists to characterize the decision to help with an expectation that one will receive some benefit or payoff to oneself.The tendency to help others is to an extent an evolutionary adaptation. One is particularly helpful to the kin and to people who are perceived as being similar to oneself. By cooperating with others, ones chances of survival and reproductive success increase, even if the individuals aren't perceived as same or similar.

2) One is most likely to help when he or she is rewarded and less likely when the perceived costs of helping are high.

3) Social norms for helping include the reciprocity norm, which reminds the person involved that the principles of reciprocal altruism should be followed, and the social responsibility norm, insists that one should try to help others who need assistance, even without any expectation of future payback.

4) Helping frequently involves a trade-off between self-concern and other-concern. We want to help, but self-interest often keeps us from doing so.

According to Jean Piaget, a psychologist whose primary work was in child cognitive development states that children go through two major stages of moral judgment.

Heteronomy which is the first stage (up to seven years of age). Here there is a morality constraint. After seven years, the stage of Autonomy sets in gradually.

Human beings respond compassionately when they see others in pain and in need of help. While altruistic givers don’t expect any recognition, behaving compassionately toward others activates the reward centers in their brains (the parts of the brain that are most involved in empathy, altruism, and helping are the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, areas that are responsible for emotion and emotion regulation ), allowing them to feel good about themselves.

Children in particular are likely to be altruistic: They begin sharing with others at a young age, and when they see that someone is distressed, they naturally employ comforting strategies.

In an infants between 12 and 24 months of age have been shown to help, comfort, share, and cooperate with others. Children respond to others’ distress in the first year of life and that infants’ experiences with parents are linked to the development of empathic concern and empathy-related prosocial responses in the second year and they are most altruistic during this period. Toddlers become able to infer and assess others’ needs, desires, and emotional states from increasingly abstract information, and they are motivated to intervene in others’ unfortunate circumstances to help them achieve what they wish and to alleviate their negative internal states.

After the first year, children gradually develop a sense of self different from others, and at this point they enter the second year. Although, they have come to recognise that the other person is in fact another person, their egocentric thinking leads them to 'help' that other person in ways that they themselves would want to be helped. Later, they recognise that a distressed person may have feelings and need a different from their own. Their efforts to help become aimed at figuring out what the distressed person really wants, even if it's different from his own preference.During this stage which lasts through early childhood, their empathy is situation -specific.

There are both individual differences in young children’s (a) inclination towards pro sociality (b)clear constraints on their motivation and ability to engage in prosocial (touchingly helpful, generous and comforting )actions.

In this age, your toddler realizes that others have rights and needs as well. However, he is yet to grasp the difference between right and wrong. At the age 2-3 toddler might show empathy-based guilt and moral behaviors. Depending on the actions conveyed by parents, the toddler understands obedience is the norm.

They shows signs of empathy and caring: comforts another child if hurt or frightened; appears to sometimes be overly affectionate in offering hugs and kisses to children. They enjoy "helping" with household chores. They imitate everyday activities: and express their helping behaviour by trying to toilet train or feed a pretend toy. They may offer their own toys(or other things) to other children, but is usually possessive of playthings and still tends to hoard toys.

It is plausible that cultural learning may also play a role in whether and how context affects responsiveness to emotions in others. Prosocial behavior of many different sorts appears in the second year of life, possibly earlier for some forms.