Authors
Jellie Sierksma
Publication date
2015
Institution
Sl: sn
Description
Our concern for other people’s wellbeing has preoccupied philosophers at least since Aristotle and has received systematic empirical attention since the 20th century. Much research in developmental psychology has studied the origins and development of prosocial behavior, such as sharing, comforting and helping. This research has provided several insights into children’s helping behavior and why some children are more helpful than others. We know that children start to empathize with others at an early age, and are motivated to help from at least 14 months onwards (see Warneken & Tomasello, 2014). With increasing age, children’s helping behavior becomes more sophisticated and children have a better understanding of another person’s need (Eisenberg-Berg, 1979). This is also reflected in the quotes above: Children react with indignation when others refuse to help. However, what also is clear when reading some of these quotes is that children consider who the recipient of help is, and how this might affect the blameworthiness of not helping. Although developmental work has shown how children’s abilities and dispositions influence their prosocial reasoning, we know very little about who children might want to help and why they might not want to help others.
Total citations
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