| Altruism is thought to be a major contributor to the large-scale non-kinship based cooperation in human societies. Humans have been shown to act altruistically from a very young age, however, much of the supporting evidence comes from participants living in normal and affluent conditions. It is entirely unknown whether children continue to act altruistically when facing adversities. Arguably, adversity is one of the most common human experiences, we regularly encounter adverse events such as personal tragedies, political upheavals, and natural disasters. In the present thesis, we showed for the first time that experiencing a major natural disaster affects children’s altruistic giving, and investigated the mental mechanism underlying the behaviors and it’s developmental tendency. The promoting roles of personal experience, empathy, self-categorization in children’s disaster-altruistic giving have been discussed, so did the negative effect of "mandatory donations". This project took more than four years, including five studies.Study1. Experiencing a natural disaster alters children’s altruistic giving:a three-year study.Objective:examined the effect of experiencing a major natural disaster on children’s altruistic behavior by contrast their behaviors before and after the disaster., And investigated it’s continuous influence.Hypothesis:(1) children in the1-month post-earthquake group might be more selfish or be more generous than those in the pre-earthquake group;(2) If the change was caused by natural disaster, it will change back after the disaster. Method:6-and9-year-old children in earthquake area were selected. In EXP1, children were divided into3groups:1) the pre-quake group,2) the1-month post-quake group,3) the3-year post-quake group. In EXP2,16children of1month post-quake group were tested in three years. A modified dictator game was adopted to measure the altruism of children.Results:whereas most6-and9-year-olds behaved altruistically before the disaster, immediately after it,6-year-olds became more selfish while9-year-olds acted even more altruistically. Further,3years after the disaster, both6-and9-year-olds’ altruistic tendencies returned to the pre-earthquake level.Summary:The immediate negative effect of the earthquake on6-year-olds suggests that altruism at that age is still fragile. And fortunately, the negative effects were not long-lasting. The enhanced altruism in9-year-olds suggests that altruism is strong sufficiently to withstand the challenge of adversity and can be enhanced at that age.Study2. Moderated role of empathy in children’s disaster-altruistic behaviorsObjective:examined the role of empathy in children’s altruistic giving.Hypothesis:witnessing devastation and human suffering caused by the natural disaster might evoke different levels of empathic responses which lead to differences in6-and9-year-olds’ altruisticMethod:Children were tested with the first session involving the dictator game and the second session involving the Chicago Pain Empathy Test. For the experimental group, children read20pictures of Wenchuan earthquake before the dictator game.Results:empathy level was positively correlated to the number of donated stickers. Nine-year-old children in disaster-priming group donated more stickers than those in control group. Importantly, after read the disaster pictures, only high-empathy children became generous, a statistic significant difference was not find in the low-empathy children.Summary:All of these results supported the "empathy-altruism hypothesis". Human altruism might bootstrap on this phylogenetic old empathy mechanism. The marked age difference in altruistic reactions seen here suggests the important role that developmental factors may play in the ontogeny of human altruism.The survivors had positive experience (such as receiving donations, being helped, being concerned with), besides of the negative experience on the damage and fear. Did the positive experience have function on improving children’s altruism? The study3was conducted. Study3. How positive experience on disaster impacts the children’s disaster-altruistic giving.Objective:explored whether the positive experience in disaster promoted children’s altruistic giving when they would be facing natural disaster.Hypothesis:the positive experience in disaster would promote children’s disaster-altruistic giving.Method:based on study2, a rebuild group was added, in which20pictures on rebuild post Wenchuan earthquake were chosen to serve as priming materials. Moreover, arousal and valence of two picture groups were estimated, revealing that there was significant difference between valence of disaster pictures and that of rebuild pictures while the arousal dimension was not.Results:(1) after reading the set of rebuilding pictures,9-year-olds would like to give their favorite stickers to anonymous classmates;(2) children who had positive experience donated more stickers than those who had no positive experience on disaster;(3) low empathy children in disaster area presented more generosity when their positive experience were aroused, but they didn’t become generous when their negative experience was aroused.Summary:The results of Study3were with two implications:First, altruistic giving might be affected by the contextual situation, which would improve children’s altruism if there were filled with altruistic atmosphere. Second, as a survivor who was cared by others, even low empathy children would manifest their generosity to others by positive emotion was evoked when they meet a similar situation.The receivers were proposer’s classmate rather than the real victims in disaster in the tasks of Study2and Study3. However, children performed more altruistically like what had done in real disaster. We speculated that children might change their self categorization when they were facing the acute stress of disaster. That is, children would like to identify the victims, their classmates, and themselves as members from the same group, then show greater altruism. So when face the natural disaster which group will the children categories themselves in, a member of a nation, or a number of human being. Therefore, we performed the Study4.Study4. Self-categorization moderated children’s disaster-altruistic giving.Experiment1. Self-categorization lead to different performances in children’s altruistic giving for their classmates.Objective:to examine the effect of self-categorization on children’s disaster-altruistic giving.Hypothesis:(1) reading Chinese disaster pictures might let children donate more stickers than those of reading foreign disaster pictures.(2) Children with the higher empathy score were more likely to donate more stickers.Method:we modified the procedure in control group in which20picture from CAPs’ neutral set were selected as priming materials. Additionally,20pictures about Haiti earthquake were selected as foreign disaster priming materials, and those arouse and valence were similar to Chinese disaster picture’s. The procedure was the same to study2and3.Results:(1) similar to foregoing studies, there was no significant effect in the three conditions for6-year-old children.(2) Compared to control group,9-year-old children of Chinese disaster-priming group were more generous; but those of foreign disaster-priming weren’t.(3) For9-year-old children, there was a positive correlation between empathy level and donations.Summary:results of Study4indicated that as early as in middle childhood, human began to emerge in-group preferences when facing with natural disaster. The underlying mental mechanism might be the group identification of their self categorization. In disaster, children changed the cognition of relationship between themselves and others. However, we couldn’t make clear whether the dimension of classification was "nation" or "race". This question would be answered in Experiment2.Experiment2. The classificated preference when children coped with natural disaster under several cues of categorizations.Subjective:to examine the priority that children defined themselves’ categorization.Hypothesis:(1) children of Chinese disaster-priming group were more generous than those of the other three groups.(2) The high empathy children of Chinese disaster-priming group would donate more stickers than those of the other three groups.(3) There were no significant difference among the control group, the Japanese disaster-priming group, and the Haiti disaster-priming groups.Method:according to the EXP1of Study4, only9-year-old children were recruited in Experiment2, and the Japanese disaster-priming group was added, in which children would read20pictures about Japanese disaster before theytook part in the dictator game.Results:nine-year-old children selected prior "nation" as self-categorization.. Moreover, empathy and altruism were positively related.Results:(1) the performance of6-year-old children weren’t significant among all experimental conditions.(2) For9-year-old children, there was no priming effect like that of studies above. However,(3) high empathy children donated more stickers than low empathy children.Summary:Results revealed that the sense of responsibility was one of the motive sources for altruistic behavior besides of empathy. The alternative explains was that the inhibition of donating might an adaption to environment.General summary:experiencing disaster led younger children more selfish and older children more generous. This effect was immediate, not long-lasting. That is, children adopt different manner to deal with major environmental adversities. Empathy modulated the performance of children in disaster. Disaster improved the high empathy children’ altruism behaviors and they donated more. On the other hand, the "group select" mechanism emerged on9-year-old children who defined their self-categorization by nation. After a "mandatory donation", the next natural disaster couldn’t improve children’s donations. There were two possible reasons:(1) when children thought they had accomplished their civil duties or obligations, it became difficult to increase their donations;(2) the decreasing of altruistic giving was an adaptive reaction. However, there was a positive correlation between empathy and altruism. |
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