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Young Children Want to See Others Get the Help They Need
Author(s) -
Hepach Robert,
Vaish Amrisha,
Grossmann Tobias,
Tomasello Michael
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/cdev.12633
Subject(s) - psychology , pupillary response , arousal , action (physics) , developmental psychology , object (grammar) , cognitive psychology , repetition (rhetorical device) , pupil , social psychology , linguistics , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , neuroscience
Children's instrumental helping has sometimes been interpreted as a desire to complete action sequences or to restore the physical order of things. Two‐year‐old children ( n = 51) selectively retrieved for an adult the object he needed rather than one he did not (but which equally served to restore the previous order of things), and those with greater internal arousal (i.e., pupil dilation) were faster to help. In a second experiment ( n = 64), children's arousal increased when they witnessed an adult respond inappropriately to another adult's need. This was not the case in a nonsocial control condition. These findings suggest that children's helping is not aimed at restoring the order of things but rather at seeing another person's need fulfilled.