SAFETYLIT WEEKLY UPDATE

We compile citations and summaries of about 400 new articles every week.
RSS Feed

HELP: Tutorials | FAQ
CONTACT US: Contact info

Search Results

Journal Article

Citation

Hepach R, Vaish A, Tomasello M. Psychol. Sci. 2012; 23(9): 967-972.

Affiliation

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Association for Psychological Science, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1177/0956797612440571

PMID

22851443

Abstract

Young children help other people, but it is not clear why. In the current study, we found that 2-year-old children's sympathetic arousal, as measured by relative changes in pupil dilation, is similar when they themselves help a person and when they see that person being helped by a third party (and sympathetic arousal in both cases is different from that when the person is not being helped at all). These results demonstrate that the intrinsic motivation for young children's helping behavior does not require that they perform the behavior themselves and thus "get credit" for it, but rather requires only that the other person be helped. Thus, from an early age, humans seem to have genuine concern for the welfare of others.


Language: en

NEW SEARCH


All SafetyLit records are available for automatic download to Zotero & Mendeley
Print