Getting Help for Others: An Examination of Indirect Helping in Young Children

When young children recruit others to help a person in need, media reports often treat it as a remarkable event. Yet it is unclear how commonly children perform this type of prosocial behavior and what forms of social understanding, cognitive abilities, and motivational factors promote or discourage it. In this study, 48 3- to 4-year-old children could choose between two actors to retrieve an out-of-reach object for a third person; during this event, one actor was physically unable to provide help. Nearly all of children’s responses appropriately incorporated the actors’ action capacities, indicating that rational prosocial reasoning – the cognitive basis for effective indirect helping – is common at this young age. However, only half of children actually directed an actor to help, suggesting that additional motivational factors constrained their prosocial actions. A behavioral measure of social inhibition and within-task scaffolding that increased children’s personal involvement were both strongly associated with children’s initiation of indirect helping behavior. These results highlight social inhibition and recognizing one’s own potential agency as key motivational challenges that children must overcome to recruit help for others.

当幼童招募他人协助救助有需要的人时，媒体报道往往将其视为一个值得注意的事件。然而，关于儿童进行此类亲社会行为的普遍程度，以及何种形式的社会理解、认知能力和动机因素促进或抑制这种行为尚不明确。在本研究中，48名3至4岁的儿童在帮助第三者取回触手可及的物品时，可在两位演员之间进行选择；在此过程中，其中一位演员因身体原因无法提供帮助。几乎所有儿童的回应都恰当地融合了演员的行动能力，表明在如此幼小的年龄阶段，基于有效间接帮助的认知基础的理性亲社会推理是普遍存在的。然而，只有一半的儿童实际指导演员去提供帮助，这暗示了其他动机因素限制了他们的亲社会行为。社会抑制的行为测量以及增加儿童个人参与度的任务内支架都强烈关联于儿童发起间接帮助行为。这些结果突显了社会抑制和认识到自身潜在能动性作为儿童必须克服以招募他人帮助的关键动机挑战。