Why do we help? Does joint attention facilitate prosocial behaviour in young children and what role do siblings play?

Abstract

Prosocial behaviour is an important aspect of human interaction, crucial for creating and maintaining peer relationships in children. However, we know relatively little about how the selectivity of prosocial behaviour develops in young children’s social relationships. Research shows that social bonding activities promote prosocial behaviour. This suggests a cognitive mechanism facilitating social bonding. Therefore, we suggest joint attention as a possible explaining mechanism for prosocial behaviour. Furthermore, as joint attention might work differently for children with siblings, we suggest an interaction effect of joint attention and siblings on prosocial behaviour. To research this, we did a behaviour experiment with children between three and five years old with a joint attention condition in which the participant watched a video with an experimenter and a disjoint attention condition in which the participant watched a video while the experimenter read a book. We then looked at whether watching a video with someone else influenced helping behaviour and whether children with siblings showed more helping behaviour. Although we could not draw definitive conclusions about the effect of joint attention on prosocial behaviour and about the interaction effect of siblings and joint attention on prosocial behaviour, it has become clear that we need to continue researching this. By doing so, we gain a better understanding of the mechanism facilitating prosocial behaviour and the role that siblings play. This might help us to stimulate prosocial behaviour in children struggling with this.