developmentalpsych4dummies

[developmentalpsych4dummies]

Encouraging Altruism in Children: What (Not) to Do

I was roped into watching 50 First Dates this weekend and actually enjoyed it. Despite all my criticisms of Adam Sandler movies, I can’t help but be charmed by Drew Barrymore. Talented, beautiful, funny — would you believe she has a pretty good hold on the whole parenting thing too? In an interview, she once said “The best kind of parent you can be is to lead by example.” Your kid's brain is a sponge, and they take notice of their surroundings regardless of whether you’re intentionally shaping their behavior or not. All too often, we get so wrapped up in this notion that we need to actively mold our kids into the perfect person, and we forget that they’re always watching us as models of what to do.

Part of me is tempted to blame this broad cultural fixation with “shaping” kids all on Skinner (as I always do). If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know I'm not the biggest fan of his work, radical behaviorism in general, and its persistent impact on popular psychology. For newbies here, behaviorism is a theory which states that all behavior is learned through interaction with the environment. Skinner’s philosophy, radical behaviorism, suggested that all human action is the result of operant conditioning: behavioral changes dictated by reinforcement and punishment (Staddon & Cerutti, 2003). Through this lens, “learning” is nothing more than a change in external behavior following reinforcement and repetition.

While valid, to an extent, I’d hope the scope of our learning capabilities is broader than this

The idea of simple modeling behavior to aid a child’s learning is a non-starter under this frame of thought. Though modern cognitive science has disproved many of the misguided aspects of Skinner’s work, it lives on in culture and media. It’s what has (lesser) parenting blogs convinced that they can “hack” their parenting and Pavlov their kids into doing their homework through reward and reinforcement, or even create broader behavioral changes, like making your kid a good person.

Don’t get me wrong — wanting your kid to be an altruistic, good person is one of the most noble endeavors there is. We all want our kids to be better than ourselves (and for good reason, since they’re the ones who will decide to ship us off to nursing homes or not). Recent research says that to effectively encourage kids’ helping behaviors, we should shake off this cultural tendency of providing extrinsic rewards. Before you bust out the candy & try to train your kids to help you out, let’s dive into the research at hand:

Research by Warneken and Tomasello (2014) explored how parents’ responses to toddlers’ helping behavior impacted the toddlers’ likelihood of helping in future instances. To test this concept, researchers first introduced 20-month-old participants to a treatment phase. The researchers dropped an out-of-reach object on the floor and waited for the infant’s help. The children that displayed helping behavior in at least 5 trials were divided into three categories: receiving a material reward, receiving verbal praise, and being addressed in a neutral manner. After going through the treatment phase, children were put through a test phase, in which they were presented with three helping tasks and distractor toys. For children to help, they would have to leave the distractor toys temporarily. The children in the neutral response and praise treatment helped equally often, but the children who received the material reward treatment helped significantly less.

The Distractor toys used during the test phase. Super engaging!

Warneken and Tomasello (2014) found that providing 20-month-olds with a material reward after they showed helping behavior actually decreased future helping behavior (chew on that, Skinner). Since the toddlers’ desire to help others is to help is internally, or intrinsically, motivated, providing an external, or extrinsic, source of motivation displaces the original motivation. Since external rewards for altruistic behavior are not sustained in the same way intrinsic motivation is, motivation decreases following the displacement of intrinsic motivation. This displacement is referred to as the overjustification effect.

The study’s praise condition. After the researcher demonstrates that the dropped object is out of reach, we see the little helper hard at work almost instantly!

The work at hand establishes not only that providing external rewards isn’t an effective way to encourage long-term patterns of helping behavior in kids, but it supports the idea that starting from toddlerhood, the desire to help others is innate (Warneken & Tomasello, 2014). If you don’t believe it, try this out with your kids at home: when your kid is not distracted, drop an object in front of them, and make a grasping motion towards it. Stop short of the object and show that you’re unable to reach it. Even without prompting your child to help you in any way, it’s likely that your child will spontaneously help you out.

When they do so, take a careful note from Warneken & Tomasello! Don’t hand them that toy or snack for a job well done; instead, providing them with verbal praise can be an effective means of affirming their altruistic behavior without undermining their intrinsic motivation. You can then try this same demonstration again while your child is distracted to test whether or not the behavior persists.

When I give parents this advice, though, they tend to express concern that praising kids verbally doesn’t feel as active as providing kids with an extrinsic reward. I get it. We want to play an active role in our child’s development, to know that we’re not just keeping them static, but truly fostering the growth of good behavior. For parents looking to take a more active approach, I’d suggest modeling the kind of behavior you want to see.

Research by Clary and Miller (1986) examined patterns of sustained altruism as a telephone crisis-counseling agency. Through interviews with volunteers about their childhood experiences, it was found that volunteers with the most sustained commitment to their work were those that reported having positive relationships with their parents, who modeled altruism during the volunteer’s childhood. In contrast, the volunteer who showed less commitment reported having more negative relationships with their parents, who often modeled altruism to a lesser degree.

To come to this conclusion, the researchers divided participants into two groups: volunteers who committed their 6-month volunteering commitment, and those who did not. Participants were asked to complete a 7-page volunteer survey including biographical information, personality measures, and socialization history, which assessed relationship with parents and the extent to which parents modeled helping behavior during childhood. After this information was collected, it was found that the socialization measures were significant predictors of sustained altruism.

To encourage children to engage in sustained patterns of altruism throughout their life, do not just speak about altruistic behavior, but model that behavior for them early and frequently. Testing this out on your kids can take a multitude of forms: it might look like volunteering alongside your child at a local soup kitchen, or even helping out your spouse with household chores in front of your child. No matter the kind and degree of helping behavior you choose to model, it is a model nonetheless. To see the effects of consistently modeling helping behavior, you might have to wait a few years, when your child has the agency (and motor coordination) to choose to engage in consistent helping behavior within their community. 

Your kids might not be the next Mother Teresa, but there’s a good chance they’ll engage in the same patterns of altruistic behavior that were modelled for them as they were growing up. Across the board, though, well-rounded parenting approaches are the best. No two kids are the same. Using the methods described above are good ways to test out what works for your kids and what doesn’t, but take note of your child’s individual-level responsiveness to see what actually works for them.

References

Clary, E. G., & Miller, J. (1986). Socialization and Situational Influences on Sustained Altruism. Child Development, 57(6), 1358–1369. https://doi.org/10.2307/1130415

Staddon, J. E., & Cerutti, D. T. (2003). Operant conditioning. Annual review of psychology, 54, 115–144. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.54.101601.145124

Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2008). Extrinsic rewards undermine altruistic tendencies in 20-month-olds. Developmental Psychology, 44(6), 1785–1788. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013860