Cognitive Processes and Prosocial Behaviors Among Children: The Role of Affective Attributions and Reconciliations

Although attributions about others’ sad emotions have been shown to be positively related to helping behavior, there have been considerable inconsistencies in the fi ndings. This study was designed to investigate the relations of affective attributions, affective reconciliations, and cognitive perspective-taking measures to prosocial behavior. Eightynine preschool through second grade children were administered various social cognition indices (two affective and one cognitive); the children were then given an opportunity to help a same-sex confederate child obtain toys. Helping that required a specifi c form of affective attribution and reconciliation was signifi cantly related to the affective attribution and reconciliation measures when the demands required by the helping opportunity “matched” the social cognition measure demands. The fi ndings are discussed in terms of the need to reconceptualize the relations between social cognitive skills and helping. This research was sponsored by a grant to George P. Knight from the Offi ce of the Vice President of Research at Arizona State University and by Career Development Award K04HD00717 from the National Institute of Child Health and Development and National Science Foundation Grant BNS-8807784 awarded to Nancy Eisenberg. We wish to thank the principals, staff, and teachers of Hudson, Evans, and Laird Elementary Schools, and the Child Study Lab at Arizona State University for their cooperation. We also gratefully acknowledge the help of Jolyn Askey, Sandy Burke, Roxana Carlo, Lisa Gambino, Sarette Horowitz, Chris Knight, Beverly Matsumoto, Dan Milburn, Kevin Mohler, Mark Morris, Jane Russo, Kristen Schillereff, and Greta Thies.