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Examining the influence of shyness on children’s helping and comforting behaviour

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 beh...

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Autores principales: Karasewich, Tara A., Hines, Cameron, Pinheiro, Sylvia G. V., Buchenrieder, Nina, Dunfield, Kristen A., Kuhlmeier, Valerie A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10008939/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36923150
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1128588
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author Karasewich, Tara A.
Hines, Cameron
Pinheiro, Sylvia G. V.
Buchenrieder, Nina
Dunfield, Kristen A.
Kuhlmeier, Valerie A.
author_facet Karasewich, Tara A.
Hines, Cameron
Pinheiro, Sylvia G. V.
Buchenrieder, Nina
Dunfield, Kristen A.
Kuhlmeier, Valerie A.
author_sort Karasewich, Tara A.
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-100089392023-03-14 Examining the influence of shyness on children’s helping and comforting behaviour Karasewich, Tara A. Hines, Cameron Pinheiro, Sylvia G. V. Buchenrieder, Nina Dunfield, Kristen A. Kuhlmeier, Valerie A. Front Psychol Psychology 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. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-02-27 /pmc/articles/PMC10008939/ /pubmed/36923150 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1128588 Text en Copyright © 2023 Karasewich, Hines, Pinheiro, Buchenrieder, Dunfield and Kuhlmeier. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Karasewich, Tara A.
Hines, Cameron
Pinheiro, Sylvia G. V.
Buchenrieder, Nina
Dunfield, Kristen A.
Kuhlmeier, Valerie A.
Examining the influence of shyness on children’s helping and comforting behaviour
title Examining the influence of shyness on children’s helping and comforting behaviour
title_full Examining the influence of shyness on children’s helping and comforting behaviour
title_fullStr Examining the influence of shyness on children’s helping and comforting behaviour
title_full_unstemmed Examining the influence of shyness on children’s helping and comforting behaviour
title_short Examining the influence of shyness on children’s helping and comforting behaviour
title_sort examining the influence of shyness on children’s helping and comforting behaviour
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10008939/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36923150
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1128588
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