The propensity of humans to engage in prosocial behavior is unlike that of any other species. Individuals will help others even when it comes at a cost to themselves, and even when the others are complete strangers. However, to date, scant empirical evidence has been forthcoming on young children's altruistic tendencies. To investigate this 45 4-year-olds were presented with a task in which the...

Anthropology is becoming an increasingly popular source from which to borrow tools to investigate marketing and consumer behavior. Not only do many anthropologists themselves conduct some marketing and consumer research, but more and more marketers are developing anthropological methods in their marketing practice and research. The anthropological approach focuses on the influences of culture a...

OBJECTIVES Although empathy is a well-established motivation in younger adults for helping others, it is not known whether this extends to aging. Prioritization of socioemotional goals with age may increase the salience of helping others (i.e., prosocial behavior), but older adults also experience decreased cognitive empathy. Thus, we investigated age-related differences in relationships among ...

The complexity of humans' cooperative behavior cannot be fully explained by theories of kin selection and group selection. If reciprocal altruism is to provide an explanation for altruistic behavior, it would have to depart from direct reciprocity, which requires dyads of individuals to interact repeatedly. For indirect reciprocity to rationalize cooperation among genetically unrelated or even ...

Five studies merged the priming methodology with the bystander apathy literature and demonstrate how merely priming a social context at Time 1 leads to less helping behavior on a subsequent, completely unrelated task at Time 2. In Study 1, participants who imagined being with a group at Time 1 pledged significantly fewer dollars on a charity-giving measure at Time 2 than did those who imagined ...

For centuries people have washed away their guilt by washing their hands. Do people need to wash their own hands, or is it enough to watch other people wash their hands? To induce guilt, we had participants write about a past wrong they had committed. Next, they washed their hands, watched a washing-hands video, or watched a typing-hands video. After the study was over, participants could help ...

Contingent reciprocity is important in theories of the evolution of human cooperation, but it has been very little studied in ontogeny. We gave 2- and 3-year-old children the opportunity to either help or share with a partner after that partner either had or had not previously helped or shared with the children. Previous helping did not influence children's helping. In contrast, previous sharin...

Can a subtle linguistic cue that invokes the self motivate children to help? In two experiments, 3- to 6-year-old children (N = 149) were exposed to the idea of "being a helper" (noun condition) or "helping" (verb condition). Noun wording fosters the perception that a behavior reflects an identity-the kind of person one is. Both when children interacted with an adult who referenced "being a hel...

Knowledge sharing is crucial to organizational and team success. As the complexity and contextualization of knowledge management systems continue to escalate, employees are increasingly relying on peers for contextualized technical help. Our study focuses on knowledge sharing from the perspective of employees who provide technical help, and whether employees who are central to team communicatio...