Abstract
The study of young children’s prosocial emotions, especially as they regulate children’s social interactions toward cooperative ends, is burgeoning. We join Algoe (2020) and Tsang (2020) in their assessment that early ontogeny provides a unique window into the study of prosocial emotions, and that the behavioural methods developed to study prosocial emotions in young children could productively be employed across the lifespan. One particularly intriguing question moving forward is to what degree the role of prosocial emotions within kin relationships is comparable to or different from the functions they fulfil in regulating cooperative relationships with nonkin (peers).
The ontogenetically early onset and range of children’s prosocial behaviour is nothing short of impressive. In the target article, we argued that the systematic study of prosocial emotions is a recent but important addition to the broader inquiry into prosociality in early childhood. Two central tenets of our proposal are as follows: (a) early ontogeny provides a unique window through which prosocial emotions can be studied in ways that research with adult subjects does not allow for; (b) some key prosocial emotions emerge during the first 3 years of life, fulfilling their adaptive functions of maintaining and repairing cooperative relationships with nonkin (Vaish & Hepach, 2020). In the following, we respond to the comments by Algoe (2020) and Tsang (2020), which challenged us to further elaborate on those key points.
First, most existing research on prosocial emotions such as guilt and gratitude has been conducted with adult participants. Though some studies have included measures of subjects’ prosocial behaviour (Keltner, 1996; Keltner & Buswell, 1997), the majority of studies with adults are based on subjective ratings of emotional experiences using questionnaires. This methodological route is not available with young children due to their limited verbal and introspection skills. However, as Tsang (2020) aptly notes, while adults’ subjective reports and ratings of emotions provide important insights into the phenomenon of (pro)social emotions, there is no a priori reason to assume that this is the only genuine—or even the best—access to the study of these emotions. Adults’ responses are influenced by social desirability concerns (Nederhof, 1985), and even when adults introspect and report on their emotions without social desirability concerns, it is extremely difficult to ascertain how each adult conceptualizes a particular emotion (for instance, one adult may label an emotional experience “guilt” whereas another may label the same experience “shame” or “sadness”) and equally difficult to be certain that all adults conceptualize a particular emotion in the same way (see also Tsang, 2020). We thus appreciate Tsang’s view that behavioural measures of prosocial emotions that have been developed for use with young children need not be considered secondary or limited but “can also be considered a strength” (Tsang, 2020, p. 274). Indeed, though we took a somewhat defensive stance on behavioural measures of prosocial emotions in our target article, we are emboldened by Tsang’s comment and second her suggestion that behavioural measures should increasingly be incorporated into other areas of psychology and seen as an essential way of complementing self-report measures.
Second, studying adults illustrates adults’ qualitative experience of emotions, and it certainly speaks to the fascination for emotions as a scientific topic of inquiry that adults are capable of such diverse and often nuanced emotional experiences (Barrett, 2006). It is, however, an empirical question whether young children experience gratitude and guilt in the same ways as adults do. Indeed, and aligning with more constructivist theories (Averill, 1980), emotion categories may well be broader and less discrete in young children before they begin to differentiate them into more adult-like forms from middle childhood onwards. Alternatively, children’s emotion categories may well be quite distinct from those seen in adults. Thus, even if children could reflect and report on their emotional experiences, children’s reports may not reveal the same categories of emotions, and this may itself be an important empirical finding that reflects the nature of prosocial emotions in early development. We therefore join both comments in advocating more research using the kinds of novel paradigms we described in the target article—paradigms that we believe can elucidate the developmental foundations, functions, and trajectory across the lifespan of prosocial emotions.
In this vein, Algoe (2020) argues that adult research, and consequently developmental research, has focussed on cooperation and cooperative relationships between children and nonkin, but that this narrow study of emotions can overlook the significance of children’s relationships with their caregivers. Indeed, seminal work suggested that while toddlers expressed empathic concern upon seeing both their mother and a nonkin experimenter express distress, they were more motivated to help their mother (Zahn-Waxler et al., 1992). Arguably, children spend the majority of their time with caregivers (and possibly siblings) before they interact with unrelated peers or adults on a regular basis, for example, in kindergarten settings. The suggestion then is that children’s prosocial emotions are shaped first in their interactions with caregivers with the purpose of forming good relationships before these emotions are further shaped in the context of forming cooperative relationships with peers. This suggested progression of how prosocial emotions develop is certainly plausible and presents a proposal that, to our knowledge, has not yet been tested.
Its plausibility notwithstanding, we want to articulate a contrasting standpoint whereby we suggest that peer relationships pose challenges to children’s social development in ways that child–caregiver relationships do not. Children’s relationships with their primary caregivers are dependent (asymmetrical), whereas relationships with unrelated peers are interdependent (symmetrical). The caregiver provides for the child, who is fully dependent on the adult. In this context, social emotions (including, for instance, social smiling) develop to “bind” the caregiver and the child. It is conceivable that children express gratitude or guilt toward their primary caregivers, but the parent’s provision of care is not contingent on the expression of those emotions. In fact, strong negative emotions also serve the function of “binding” the caregiver, who attends to the child until the child’s need is met, which in turn fosters the child–caregiver bond. In contrast, the dynamic underlying peer relationships is fundamentally different given their interdependent nature. Here, children who do not show gratitude for being helped (verbally and/or through reciprocity) or guilt after having harmed others (verbally and/or through repair) risk being avoided or excluded by their peers. Caregivers, on the other hand, will not (typically) abandon a child for not showing these emotions. We therefore suggest that peer cooperative relationships create selection pressures for prosocial emotions to mature in ways that are qualitatively different from relationships between children and their caregivers. This proposal will need systematic empirical investigation. What is clear, though, is that the broader question raised by Algoe (in 2020) about the emergence and role of prosocial emotions within close, kin relationships versus relationships with nonkin is one that the field must begin to answer to fully understand prosocial emotions.
