How to increase altruism in toddlers

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: How to increase altruism in toddlers

"Sixty 18-month-old infants were shown eight photos of household objects, such as teapots, books or shoes. Crucially, infants were divided into four groups, with each group shown one of four versions of these photos. One "affiliated" version featured in the background two dolls standing together side by side; another version featured a doll in the background on its own; the third version featured two dolls facing away from each other; and the final version merely had toy bricks in the background.
After they'd been shown these photos, another experimenter walked over to the infants and dropped a bunch of pens on route. Amazingly, the infants who'd seen the photos with the companionable dolls in the background were three times as likely as the other infants to help the experimenter by spontaneously picking up one or more sticks and handing it to the experimenter.
Further analysis showed it's not that the infants who'd seen the photos with companionable dolls were caused to be in a better mood, nor that they spent longer looking at the photos, than the other infants. Rather, according to the researchers, "the connections between affiliation to the group and prosocial behaviour are ... so fundamental that, even in infancy, a mere hint of affiliation is sufficient to increase helping."
Over and Carpenter said their finding has important implications for research - paving the way for future investigations of other non-verbal social influences on infants' behaviour - and also for real life. "Our data suggest that surprisingly subtle changes to our social environment may promote prosocial behaviour in our children." "


Sometimes the simplest of things have a profound effect, the social "butterfly effect". What makes these little things great is it doesn't feel like preaching or hardwork but paradoxically, we under estimate these little things since they don't seem to be mind boggling.