Developmental Trajectories of Preschooler's Goal-Based, Emotion-Based, and Costly Helping and the Role of Prosocial Emotions

Human’s exceptional ability and motivation to help others is a fundamental building block on which societies can flourish. While there are numerous cross-sectional studies examining the developmental trajectories of helping behaviour in early childhood, few studies have applied a longitudinal lens and investigated the emotional motivators underling helping. The studies in this thesis address these gaps in the literature by utilizing data from a longitudinal study (N = 255) to explore: 1) the developmental trajectories and progressions of instrumental-, emotion-based-, and costly helping in 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old preschoolers (Chapter Two), 2) the emotional rewards associated with instrumental-, emotion-based-, and costly helping in preschoolers (Chapter Three), and 3) the specific emotional characteristics and behavioural outcomes of seeing others being helped in 6.5- to 8.5-year-old children (Chapter Four). The results support previous cross-sectional work by showing that helping generally increases with age, however, children’s helping was more nuanced than expected with significant differences in children’s spontaneous helping between trials within each task type. Further, cross-lagged effects showed that children progress from instrumental helping to more emotion-based- (i.e., sadness) and costly (i.e., sadness) helping. Children’s developmental milestones were mirrored in children’s emotional gains as children’s happiness also generally increased with age with more spontaneous helpers displaying the highest happiness. However, there was no evidence that children’s happiness at a previous timepoint predicts helping one year later. Finally, seeing others being helped elicited distinct positive emotional experiences (i.e., happiness, warmth, care) compared to seeing talent in others. Perhaps surprisingly, there was no difference in prosocial behaviours displayed after seeing others being helped compared to seeing talent. Taken together, the findings in this thesis offer novel methodological approaches to measure emotion in early childhood and provide exciting insights into the interplay between helping and emotions.

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor dc:publisher

ResearchSpace@Auckland

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Gibhardt, Sina

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Henderson, Annette
• Erb, Chris

Statement dc:rights

• Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2292/65224

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:researchspace.auckland.ac.nz:2292/65224