Little helpers: Children care about what’s good for you, not just what you want
Research from Victoria University of Wellington suggests that when children help others they demonstrate paternalistic behaviour and the ability to consider what someone wants as well as what’s good for them.
Led by Dr Alia Martin, director of Victoria‘s Infant and Child Cognition Laboratory, the study is the first of its kind to look at paternalistic motivation in children’s helping behaviour.
“Paternalistic motivation is when you help someone by overriding their immediate desires if they conflict with their long-term best interests. For example, if a friend is trying to quit smoking but asks you to borrow a cigarette, you might help them by overriding their request for a cigarette because you think it will better help their long-term goals,” says Dr Martin.
The study, published in a special section of Child Development, shows that by age five children balance different motivations when helping, considering the desires of the person they are helping, the consequences of fulfilling them, and alternative forms of helping available.
Dr Martin developed two experiments, studying 100 five-year-old children to examine children’s helping behaviour.
The children were told that there was another child, Benjamin, in an adjacent room, whom they could interact with via a video screen and send things to through a chute.
Once children were convinced that they were interacting with Benjamin in real time, Benjamin asked them to send him a piece of chocolate through the wall chute.
For half of the children, Benjamin’s mother then entered the video and reminded Benjamin that he gets sick when he eats chocolate. For the other half of the participants, Benjamin’s mother didn’t mention chocolate, but reminded Benjamin that he was sick last week. When Benjamin’s mother left the room the children had the option of sending Benjamin the chocolate he wanted, or fruit snacks instead.
“When the mother reminded Benjamin that chocolate makes him sick, children were more inclined to send the fruit snacks through the chute. This shows us that children are being paternalistic, by overriding Benjamin’s immediate goal of eating chocolate and giving the snack that won’t make him sick.”
Dr Martin results suggest that children’s helping behaviour is motivated in part by a consideration of the potential consequences of their helping for the recipient.
In a second experiment, children were tested to see if paternalistic motivation has limits. This time, when Benjamin requested chocolate even though it made him sick, children had to choose between giving him the chocolate he wanted or giving him a much less desirable snack—carrots. This time, most of the children sent the chocolate through the chute, despite knowing it would make Benjamin sick.
“What’s interesting about these results is that children are able to behave in this paternalistic way when they are deciding what to do to help somebody, but they are also weighing the costs and benefits of doing so. They realise that there is a negative consequence of helping the other child get what he wants—he will get sick. But the fact that they are more willing to override this concern when the alternative is still reasonably appealing (fruit snacks) than when it is less unappealing (carrots) suggests that they are also carefully weighing the negative consequence of not giving someone what they want.”
Dr Martin now plans to look at whether children will also show paternalistic motivation when they are interacting with an adult, as well as whether children can differentiate between what’s best for themselves versus what’s best for another person.
The lecturer in Victoria’s School of Psychology was awarded a Marsden Fast-Start grant last month worth $300,000 for research into children's understanding of shared knowledge and its importance for effective communication.