Children’s intergroup prosocial behavior: The role of group stereotypes

Resumen

Children are prosocial from a young age onward but their prosocial actions are not necessarily egalitarian – especially with regard to others’ group membership. From around four years of age children tend to help and share more with in-group members compared to out-group members. However, a growing body of findings also suggest that sometimes children act more prosocially toward out-group members. How can we reconcile such seemingly contradicting behaviors? In this chapter, I describe how the salience of group stereotypes might shed light on these inconsistent findings. Specifically, different helping contexts can activate different group stereotypes. These different stereotypes could lead children to sometimes act more prosocially toward in-group peers, but sometimes show out-group bias in their helping or sharing behavior. For example, contexts that involve reciprocity could increase salience of a stereotype that out-groups are less trustworthy and thus children might be less inclined to share their resources with the out-group (i.e., in-group bias). Whereas an academic helping context might make a stereotype salient that entails out-groups are less competent and thus needing more help (i.e., out-group bias). Taking into account group stereotypes in children’s prosocial behavior will provide us with a deeper understanding of the underlying motivations that lead to selective prosociality in children. In the long run, such insights can contribute to combating discrimination and prejudice early in life.

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Cómo citar (APA 7)

Sierksma, J. (2022). Children’s intergroup prosocial behavior: The role of group stereotypes. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/nsvfp