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Frequencies, Social Helping Scores, and Latencies for Children Who Provided Help Prior to the Caller's Request
Source publication
This study examined social influences on 3-year-old children’s decisions to help an experimenter gain another person’s attention (N = 32). Children were slower to help the experimenter when the target had previously expressed disinterest in attending to her. Shy children were less likely to support the experimenter’s attempts to communicate with th...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... social helping scores were higher in the Ambiguous than Not Interested condition (2.5 versus 1.0). See Table 2 for details. ...
Similar publications
This study set out to examine whether shyness, an aversion to novelty and unfamiliar social situations, can affect the processes that underlie early word learning. Twenty-four-month-old children ( n =32) were presented with sets of one novel and two familiar objects, and it was found that shyer children were less likely to select a novel object as...
Citations
... Shyness appears to be a particularly important pathway for the development of maladaptive child outcomes, such as poor school adjustment, peer rejection, avoidance of social behavior, and anxious symptoms (Coplan and Arbeau 2008;Hassan and Schmidt 2022;Karevold et al. 2011;Rubin, Coplan, and Bowker 2009). Shy children may be especially challenged by novel social contexts, showing reticence to interact with others (Eisenberg and Spinrad 2014) and thereby reducing opportunities to engage in aggressive and prosocial behaviors (Beier et al. 2017;Endedijk et al. 2015). Other work has noted an absence of a direct link between shyness and prosociality (Grady and Hastings 2018) and suggested that childhood shyness may be socially adaptive in certain contexts . ...
Temperamental characteristics and emerging cognitive control are meaningful predictors of children's development of adaptive and maladaptive social behaviors during the preschool period. However, knowledge of the interplay of these pathways, when examined concurrently to highlight their individual contributions, is limited. Using a cross‐sectional sample of 3‐year‐old children, we examined parent‐reported discrete traits of negative (anger, fear, sadness, and shyness) and positive (low‐ and high‐intensity pleasure) temperamental reactivity as predictors of children's prosociality and physical aggression. Further, we tested whether the effects of discrete temperament were moderated by cognitive control, as indexed by the N 2 event‐related potential, during a go/no‐go task. Analyses focus on a subsample of children with an observable N 2 ( n = 66). When controlling for other relative temperament traits, several significant main effects emerged. Moreover, at low cognitive control (smaller N 2), fear was negatively associated with aggression, whereas at high cognitive control, sadness was positively associated with aggression. Heightened anger was linked to reduced prosocial behavior when cognitive control was low but linked to greater prosocial behavior when cognitive control was high. The results highlight that discrete temperament traits predict individual differences in child outcomes but that associations depend on concurrent levels of cognitive control.
... For example, shy children, who tend to feel anxious around others and withdraw from social interactions (Coplan and Armer, 2007), may be less prosocial than their not-shy peers, under certain conditions. As examples, shyer children have been found to intervene less often on behalf of an experimenter than their own mothers, to intervene less in socially engaged ways, and to require more prompting in order to intervene (e.g., Young et al., 1999;Beier et al., 2017;Karasewich et al., 2019;MacGowan and Schmidt, 2021). It is important to note, however, that shyness effects on young children's prosocial behaviour have not been found in all studies (e.g., Schuhmacher et al., 2017;Grossmann et al., 2020). ...
... It is likely that shy children will be less willing to intervene whenever they are feeling anxious, and they may also struggle to process prosocial situations in order to effectively intervene (e.g., Young et al., 1999;MacGowan and Schmidt, 2021). Thus, we tested how preschool children ranging in shyness would respond to four prosocial tasks that varied in social engagement demands and complexity, which are two factors that have been conflated in past research (e.g., Beier et al., 2017;Karasewich et al., 2019). To foreshadow, the results of the present study subverted our expectations in interesting ways, which in turn allowed for a consideration of the methods currently used to study shyness and the early development of prosociality. ...
... We would expect shy children to feel more motivated to act prosocially whenever social engagement demands are low as compared to when these demands are high (but see: MacGowan and Schmidt, 2021). This prediction is supported by Beier et al. (2017), in which shyer children readily helped an experimenter in a typical out-of-reach object task (i.e., picking up a pen that had fallen from her desk), but needed more prompting to help her in a highly social one (i.e., getting someone else's attention). Similarly, Karasewich et al. (2019) found shy children to be less likely to help in an out-of-reach object task that was modified to be very socially demanding (i.e., asking an unfamiliar adult to get the experimenter's toy from a high shelf). ...
Introduction
Shy children, who tend to feel anxious around others and withdraw from social interactions, are found to be less prosocial than their not-shy peers in some studies, though not in others. To examine the contexts in which shy children may be more or less likely to engage in prosocial behaviour, we compared children’s willingness and ability to intervene during in-person tasks that differed in socialengagement demands and complexity, factors that have been conflated in past research.
Methods
We presented 42, 3.5- to 4.5-year-old children with prosocial problems that varied, in a 2 x 2 within-subjects design, by the type of intervention required (i.e., simple helping or complex comforting) and the source of the problem (i.e., social: within the experimenter’s personal space; or object: a target object distanced from her).
Results
Most of the children acted prosocially, with little prompting, in the two helping tasks and in the object-centered comforting task. In contrast, fewer than half of the children acted prosocially in the social-centered comforting task. Shyer children were not less likely to intervene in any of the four tasks, but they were slower to intervene in the object-centred comforting task, in which the experimenter was upset about a broken toy.
Discussion
Thus, providing social-centered comfort to a recently-introduced adult is challenging for young children, regardless of shyness, though shy children do show hesitancy with object-centered comforting. Further, these findings provide insights into the methodological challenges of disentangling children’s prosocial motivation and understanding, and we propose solutions to these challenges for future research.
... Parents rated children's temperament on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (my child's behavior is never like this) to 5 (my child's behavior is always like this). The EAS temperament survey demonstrated good reliability in prior research (e.g., Beier, Terrizzi, Woodward, & Larson, 2017). The Shyness subscale (5 items, score range: 1-5) was used in this study (e.g., "Child takes a long time to warm up to strangers."). ...
Background
Prenatal exposure to air pollution increases the risk for psychiatric disorders characterized by internalizing problems. In this study, we examined the roles of shyness and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) activity in the association between prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and children's internalizing problems at 7–9 years old.
Methods
Participants include 53 children (31 girls, 22 boys). Personal air monitoring was conducted over 48 continuous hours during the third trimester of pregnancy to measure 8 PAHs. Mothers reported children's shyness (Emotionality Activity Sociability Temperament Survey) at age 5 and internalizing problems (Child Behavior Checklist) at ages 7–9. ACC activity was measured by fMRI during the Simon Spatial Incompatibility task at ages 7–9.
Results
Shyness mediated the association between prenatal PAH exposure and internalizing problems. Higher prenatal PAH exposure predicted increased shyness, which in turn predicted greater internalizing problems. Moreover, left ACC activity during the Simon task moderated the association between prenatal PAH exposure and internalizing problems. Prenatal PAH exposure predicted increased risk for internalizing problems only when children showed heightened left ACC activity during the resolution of cognitive conflict.
Conclusions
Our study innovatively synthesizes the fields of developmental psychology and environmental health science to offer new insights into the risk factors for anxiety disorders. Facilitating the development of healthy reactive and regulatory processes may improve the developmental outcomes for children highly exposed to air pollution.
... Another possible explanation is that children may see the task of disclosing information as a social helping opportunity. It is known that socially inflexible children find this type of task particularly intimidating (Beier, Terrizzi, Woodward, & Larson, 2017). This increased sensitivity of shy children might be overcome through small environmental adjustments in the interviewing context that consider a child's particular temperament to allow the child to better express themselves (e.g., an extended forensic interview where initial sessions do not involve discussion of allegations but serve to build rapport; Duron & Remko, 2020). ...
Researchers have demonstrated that interviewer supportive behaviors positively affect children's abilities to provide information about their experiences in many circumstances, but there is some evidence that supportiveness effects may be influenced by children's temperament. The associations among interviewer support, child temperament, and children's propensity to disclose adult transgressions during free recall remain unclear. Children (N = 132) 5 to 9 years old partook in an event where an adult confederate committed six transgressions. The children were interviewed a few days later; half by a supportive interviewer and half by a neutral interviewer. Within two to three months of their participation, the children's teachers completed a questionnaire to describe each child's temperament. While interviewer support did not predict these children's disclosure of transgressions, dimensions of child temperament and individual factors did. Specifically, children's disclosure tendencies were predicted by how socially flexible and task-oriented they were. Additionally, the interviewers' questioning behavior was impacted by children's level of reactivity. Taken together with other research, the results provide further evidence that behaviors of both the interviewers and the children in the interview process are relevant to facilitating children's disclosures of sensitive information.
... To test this hypothesis, it is important to first clarify how basic cognitive and emotional mechanisms are related to different aspects of moral functioning. In the recent literature, individual aspects of moral functioning have been linked to a host of cognitive and emotional factors, including general intelligence (Derryberry, Wilson, Snyder, Norman, & Barger, 2005), executive functioning , theory-of-mind (Imuta, Henry, Slaughter, Selcuk, & Ruffman, 2016;Killen et al., 2011), emotion recognition (Grossmann, 2018), empathy (Ball, Smetana, & Sturge-Apple, 2017), and social inhibition (Beier, Terrizzi, Woodward, & Larson, 2017;Karasewich, Kuhlmeier, Beier, & Dunfield, 2018;Smetana et al., 2012). Although these processes have been examined in relation to local aspects of moral functioning, no studies have yet explored how cognitive and emotional processes influence a wide range of moral behaviors and evaluations within the same children. ...
... Our original study design did not include formal measures of social inhibition and empathy. However, these two factors have been shown to be important predictors of preschoolers' moral functioning (Ball et al., 2017;Beier et al., 2017;Karasewich et al., 2018). In order to explore the roles of these processes in explaining preschool functioning, we coded children's signs of shyness and empathic concern from videos acquired during participation. ...
... Specifically, children who performed more prosocial behaviors were less shy, better at understanding others' mental states, better at recognizing facial expressions (see also Table S2 for correlation between prosocial behaviors and real-apparent emotion understanding), and more empathic. These findings are consistent with the idea that prosocial behaviors require the abilities to understand others' mental states (Imuta et al., 2016), recognize overt expressions of negative states (Grossmann, 2018;Rajhans, Altvater-Mackensen, Vaish, & Grossmann, 2016), overcome social inhibition (Beier et al., 2017;Karasewich et al., 2018), and show sympathy to others (Holmgren, Eisenberg, & Fabes, 1998). After controlling for age and gender, empathic concern was the strongest predictor of prosocial behaviors above and beyond other cognitive and emotional factors. ...
The current study examined relations between distinct aspects of moral functioning, and their cognitive and emotional correlates, in preschool age children. Participants were 171 typically developing 3‐ to 6‐year‐olds. Each child completed several tasks, including (a) moral tasks assessing both performance of various moral actions and evaluations of moral scenarios presented both verbally and nonverbally; and (b) non‐moral tasks assessing general cognitive skill, executive functioning, theory‐of‐mind, and emotion recognition. Shyness and empathic concern were assessed from video acquired during participation. Results demonstrated positive associations among distinct moral actions, as well as among distinct moral evaluation tasks, but few associations between tasks assessing moral actions and moral evaluation. Empathic concern and inhibitory control each emerged as important predictors of preschoolers’ moral functioning.
... Shy children are more susceptible to peer victimization, which is consistent with Hypothesis 1 of this study and with the findings of previous research (Xue, Han, Dou, Wu, & Gao, 2015). Due to their sensitivity and experience of social anxiety, shy children exhibit poor social behavior (Beier, Terrizzi, Woodward, & Larson, 2017). Low levels of interpersonal perception and underdeveloped social skills (Arroyo & Harwood, 2011) make it harder for shy children to maintain positive interpersonal relationships and to be accepted by their peers (Chen, Li, Xu, & Li, 1994); thus, shy children are more susceptible to victimization by their companions. ...
Many people empirically believe that shyness, as a withdrawn personality trait, is not correlated or is negatively correlated with aggression, however, previous studies have found that shy individuals show higher levels of aggression. According to the social fitness model, shy children are more likely to be excluded from the outside world and to exist in an internal state of unease. From this perspective, the present study investigated the effects of shyness on aggression by considering peer victimization and security and by finding moderating factors (parent–child attachment) to improve this phenomenon. The sample consisted of 689 children. Questionnaires were utilized to investigate the mediating mechanism of shyness on aggression from the perspective of peer victimization and security in children and the possible moderating effect of parent–child attachment. The results showed that shyness not only directly predicts aggression but also can influence aggression through the multiple mediating effects of peer victimization and security. In addition, we found that mother–child attachment moderated the relationship between shyness and peer victimization and between shyness and security. Father–child attachment moderated the relationship between security and aggression and between shyness and aggression.
... It has been argued that because shy youth often withdraw from social settings as well as show less socially competent and assertive behaviors compared to nonshy youth (Beier, Terrizzi, Woodward, & Larson, 2016;Coplan, Findlay, & Nelson, 2004), they may evoke less positive response from peers (Coplan & Bullock, 2012). Perhaps for this reason, shy youth are at greater risk of experiencing exclusion, dislike, and rejection from peers than nonshy youth (Chen, DeSouza, Chen, & Wang, 2006;Gazelle & Ladd, 2003), and these negative peer experiences may further serve to reinforce their tendency to withdraw from the peer group. ...
Temperamental shyness in childhood is theorized to be an important contributor for adolescent personality. However, empirical evidence for such pathways is scarce. Using longitudinal data (N = 939 children, 51% boys) across 17 years, the aim of this study was to examine how shyness development throughout childhood predicted personality traits in adolescence, and the role of peers in these associations. Results from piecewise latent growth curve modeling showed early shyness levels to predict lower emotional stability and openness in adolescence, whereas early shyness levels and growth across childhood predicted lower extraversion. Peer problems in early adolescence accounted for these associations. This study is the first to demonstrate the role of childhood shyness and peer relations for adolescents’ personality development.
... Second, indirect helping typically involves approaching and interacting with another person, often to a greater extent than providing direct, instrumental help (e.g., retrieving an out-of-reach object or opening a door). This type of pro-social behavior may be particularly challenging for children when they are feeling shy around others (e.g., Beier, Terrizzi, Woodward, & Larson, 2017; see also Hammond & Carpendale, 2015), and thus, the present study explored associations between children's level of social inhibition (measured behaviorally) and their responses during the task. ...
... The current findings indicate that social inhibition is an important barrier to helping behavior when helping would require communicative interaction. This is consistent with an earlier observation, in which children had to convey information between two experimenters (Beier et al., 2017). In that study, like the present one, shy children were less likely to intervene. ...
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 pro-social behavior and what forms of social understanding, cognitive abilities, and motivational factors promote or discourage it. In this study, 48 three- to four-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.
... For instance, 3-year-olds' prosocial behavior is negatively correlated with shyness (Knafo & Israel, 2012;Stanhope, Bell, & Parker-Cohen, 1987; but see Gross et al., 2015). Moreover, this negative correlation is especially evident when children help others achieve social goals (e.g., helping someone get another person's attention) rather than instrumental goals (e.g., handing someone an out-of-reach object; Beier, Terrizzi, Woodward, & Larson, 2016). As norm enforcement also entails prosocial behavior in the social rather than instrumental domain, we explored whether shyness is negatively related to norm enforcement. ...
... The negative correlation between temperamental shyness and the tendency to enforce norms makes sense, for two reasons. Firstly, protesting and tattling about moral transgressions, particularly in an unfamiliar situation with unfamiliar individuals, require children to not be overly timid in novel or uncertain situations (Beier et al., 2016). It thus follows that children who are less temperamentally shy would show greater norm enforcement behaviors. ...
... It thus follows that children who are less temperamentally shy would show greater norm enforcement behaviors. Secondly, norm enforcement is considered a form of prosocial behavior (Vaish et al., 2016) and some prior work indicates that children's prosocial behavior correlates negatively with temperamental shyness, particularly in social helping situations (Beier et al., 2016;Knafo & Israel, 2012; though see Gross et al., 2015). As such, our finding is consistent with the broader literature on the relation between temperamental shyness and prosocial behavior. ...
By 3 years of age, children tattle about rule violations they observe, even as unaffected bystanders. It is argued that tattling is one way in which children enforce norms and that in the long term, it helps sustain co‐operation (e.g., Vaish, Missana, & Tomasello, 2011). However, an alternative explanation could be that children are worried that the victim might blame them and so feel the need to inform the victim about who caused the harm. The present study aimed to tease these possibilities apart. Children observed a puppet either causing harm to another puppet (e.g., destroying their artwork) or no harm (e.g., destroying a different object). Importantly, the situation was constructed such that children knew they could not be blamed for the transgressions. Nonetheless, 3‐year‐old children tattled on the transgressor more when the transgressor had caused harm than no harm. Thus, young children's tattling about third‐party moral transgressions seems to be aimed at enforcing norms. An additional, exploratory goal of this study was to examine the relation between children's temperament and norm enforcement. Temperamental shyness negatively correlated with children's protesting and tattling behavior, though more research is needed to better understand the role of temperament in early norm enforcement.
... Second, indirect helping typically involves approaching and interacting with another person, often to a greater extent than providing direct, instrumental help (e.g., retrieving an out-of-reach object or opening a door). This type of prosocial behavior may be particularly challenging for children when they are feeling shy around others (e.g., Beier, Terrizzi, Woodward, & Larson, 2016; see also Hammond & Carpendale, 2015), and thus, the present study explored associations between children's level of social inhibition (measured behaviorally) and their responses during the task. ...
... The current findings indicate that social inhibition is an important barrier to helping behavior when helping would require communicative interaction. This is consistent with an earlier observation, in which children had to convey information between two experimenters (Beier et al., 2016). In that study, like the present one, shy children were less likely to intervene. ...
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.
